Checking VV wakes up the NFT community from a sleepy winter

When Jack Butcher created the Checks VV non-fungible token (NFT) collection earlier this month, his intention was not to make a ton of money or spark movement in the NFT space due to the effects of a long crypto winter. The former advertising expert, who recently founded a creative agency called Visualize Value, welcomed a new baby with his wife ahead of the launch of his 16,031 issue NFT project on January 3.

The project, inspired by the ubiquitous blue ticks used on social media to denote a verified account, has since grown in popularity, achieving 1,820 ETH (about $2.9 million) in secondary sales on OpenSea at the time of writing. It even spawned a number of spin-off projects created by the NFT community, propelling the project to meme status.

“It’s just been crazy,” Butcher told CoinDesk. “The timing of this is so crazy, but you can’t control it.”

The Nashville-based artist began thinking about the project in 2021 at the height of NFT mania. “When we were in the crazy hype cycle of NFTs in 2021, I was so interested in the technology because I had been making art on the internet for two or three years prior, and NFTs created a market that basically didn’t exist. “

In March 2021, he released an artwork called “NFTs Explained”, which satirically depicts the difference between a JPEG and an NFT with a verified blue tick to indicate authenticity. “I’ve been doing it for a while,” he said. That project sparked the idea for Checks VV, which Butcher says is an introspective on the evolution of authenticity on the internet.

The concept of blue checkmarks representing verification was first introduced on Twitter in 2009 as a way to prevent notable figures such as politicians, brands and celebrities from being falsely impersonated online. Since then, the mark has become something of a status symbol across other platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, denoting accounts of increased authority and cultural significance.

After Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition in October, the blue mark was put in the crosshairs and given new meaning. Previously, influencers and journalists had to apply for verification and prove their credentials to receive the coveted blue badge. In November 2022, the platform relaunched its Twitter Blue subscription, giving blue ticks to anyone willing to pay an $8 monthly fee.

The move was met with backlash from users who felt that offering verification for a fee defeated the purpose. Dozens of fake accounts pretending to be influential figures began to appear, wreaking havoc on the platform. Twitter Blue was paused and then restored in December with additional security measures in place, although the damage was done. Many accounts that had long been verified on the platform, including those of journalists and politicians, now came with a disclaimer attached to their blue badge: “This is an older verified account. It may or may not be notable.”

“Twitter has been the environment and host for NFT culture,” Butcher said. “The notability that a mark denotes in the old world versus the new world is really where the idea came from.”

Checking VV turns the verification mark into a colorful 8×10 grid. Auctioned off as an open edition, the piece symbolized that all it took to buy a hook was $8.

“The intention of this piece is to capture a moment in time – the changing context in which the verification process takes place, in a society dominated by electronic culture and communication,” Butcher wrote in his text about the project. “The coveted mark that used to be a mark given by institutions is now a symbol that means only that the holder can afford it and is willing to pay for it.”

“If none are verified, all are verified. If none are remarkable, all are remarkable.”

Butcher said the project has been perceived both as a critique of centralized authority and as a commentary on the degradation of truth on the internet. But neither interpretation is necessarily right or wrong, he explained: “People interpret it differently because the symbol is so ubiquitous.”

Despite its stylistic simplicity, the project has continued to gain popularity after its launch. According to OpenSea, the project’s floor price peaked on January 17 at 0.38 ETH, or around $600 – a 7,400% increase from its initial price of $8. Some checks with notable mintage numbers have even sold for far above the floor price. On January 20th, Check 1 was sold for 11,111 packed ETH (about $18,000 as of writing).

The NFT community has been quick to embrace the project and its cultural significance, and modeled a number of derivative projects after the project’s motifs. Blank Check, an open source project created by jehoseph.eth, shows the verified symbol of a blank bank check, while Checks Mate, a fixed coin, placed the tick on a checkerboard.

“I absolutely love it,” Butcher said of the memefied collections based on his creation. “I’d like to think that a couple of years ago, some of the stuff I did during the one-of-a-kind season had an impact or made the rounds. But nothing was ever remixed to this extent.”

He credits many factors for the success of his project, including his pre-existing network of supporters at his Visualize Value agency and the continued development of his idea through spin-off projects.

“People feel they own a part of [Checks] by creating something new,” he said. “It’s made it all that much more compelling.”

Additionally, he touted his openness regarding his artistic process along with the simplicity of the project’s coin mechanics.

“I think one thing that people underestimate about the lowest open edition, or just more accessible ways to get your art out there, is that it builds a distribution channel like nothing you’ve ever experienced before,” he said.

“It feels perhaps more in line with the ethos of Web3 which has perhaps conflicted with a lot of that behavior in the space for so long,” he added. “The kind of utopian narrative of Web3 has been a bit disconnected from reality.”

In the weeks since the project was launched, Butcher has worked to expand the premise of the original plays and continue to build its cultural legacy.

“The question we’re trying to answer is: Are checks more desirable if they’re harder to get?” he wrote on Twitter on January 8. “We can find out by stimulating a reduction in supply.”

Loosely inspired by Damian Hirst’s NFT project The Currency, Butcher has decided to introduce a burn mechanic that allows holders to remove their issue from circulation and exchange it for an on-chain original with unique art and a smaller number of checks. Burning two original 80-check NFTs will turn them into a 40-check NFT. Then burning two 40-check NFTs will create an original 20-check NFT, and so on. At the end of the experiment, there is a possible supply of three black tick marks – which would require the burning of 4,096 originals to create.

“The option you have as a holder is to determine the journey that your piece will go through,” explained Butcher. “The speculation is that people would have to coordinate to make it happen because there would obviously be a lot of effort and expense to get that many NFTs burning.”

So far, Butcher said Check collectors are finding creative ways to move the project forward.

“People have been reaching out about accessing their contracts to set up trustless [decentralized autonomous organizations] to pool checks together,” he said.

At a higher level, the gamification of the project is a reflection of the source material, which explores the exclusivity of the blue badge and the status achieved upon achieving it.

“The idea is to create art that reflects the behavior of the crowd,” Butcher explained. “[Blue checkmarks] used to be so elusive and such a dividing line, and I think that represents the spirit of Web3, crypto and NFTs that resonates with me – this idea of ​​ownership, authorship, provenance.”

“A decentralized network can say that something is remarkable, not an institution,” he concluded.