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The NFT market showed sparks of life in January with a sharp increase in trading volume and total NFTs sold, but it’s not just high value Bored Ape Yacht Club sales drive the renewed buzz. Lately, there are also open editions where artworks are sold for small sums, yet fuel hype thanks to gamification techniques and FOMO over potential future rewards.
At its core, an open edition NFT mint simply means a drop where there is no limit to how many of the identical artwork can be purchased within the availability window.
Open issues are not new – in fact they were popular on the Nifty Gateway in early 2021 when the NFT market first took off, but they typically sold for hundreds of dollars apiece. Similarly, we have seen gamification elements around previous art projects such as Damien Hirst’s The Currency and Merge from the pseudonymous artist Pak.
In the new meta (or trend), however, open-edition NFTs often sell for $10 or less – it’s like buying a print or poster instead of a 1-of-1 piece. It is thus much easier to buy into a project and lean into gamified collection mechanics that allow holders to trade multiple copies to unlock a potentially more valuable NFT, or unlock other teased future benefits.
After Bored Ape Yacht Club’s sewer passthe most popular new NFT release in 2023 so far Checks by artist Jack Butcher of Visualize value. The project, which riffs on the idea of Twitter’s verified user badge, held an open edition on Zora in early January, selling just over 16,000 of the identical editions for around $8 each.
Since then, the Checks NFTs have skyrocketed in value amid details of a gamified trading model that allows holders to burn (or permanently destroy) a certain number of issues for a less common NFT. The NFTs now start at 2.45 ETH (about $4,085) – an increase of almost 51,000% in one month. Checks have now generated worth over 26 million dollars of secondary trading to date.
The buzz surrounding Checks has ignited a wave of spin-off projects remixing the theme, including one Pepe meme theme version from the famous collector Vincent Van Dough. During the weekend, the project sold almost 238,000 copies at a price of around $7 worth of ETH each—more than $1.6 million worth.
In a playful twist, Butcher then changed the metadata—or the embedded data that determines an NFT’s attributes—so that the original Checks NFTs were identical to the Pepe versions. Artist Sean Bonner then created one turned around version of the artwork and sold it as an open edition. Other artists’ take on the Checks theme has spawned derivatives far and wide.
“There are memes that are created in real time,” Bonner said Decrypt of the open edition of boom. “We see how the ideas morph from one thing to the next, and people who can connect the right cultural references at the right moment are celebrated.”
Bonner praised Butcher for encouraging and even reinforcing derivative projects. That’s a stark contrast to aggressive legal tactics that some NFT creators have taken in the past—for example, when they’re original CryptoPunks creator Larva Labs filed a DMCA takedown notice related to V1 Punksa project built around Larva’s own abandoned assets in the chain.
Open and growing
However, the boom in the open edition is not just about checks. Especially since the start of the year, open releases of all kinds have been given new life as accruals to NFTs, as artists increasingly create affordable drops that emphasize accessibility over simple scarcity.
Artist Alex Ness made about $2.2 million in ETH at the end of January with a drop for his digital artwork “M0N3Y PR1NT3R G0 BRRRRRR,” which sold over 20,300 copies at a price of around $110 (0.069 ETH) apiece. It similarly has a burning mechanic that allows users to effectively trade for a rarer piece.
Jeremy Fall, the restaurateur turned Web3 founder behind Probably Nothing and its Probably a Label collaboration with Warner Records, has made a number of open issues since December teasing a major fiery event ahead. And rapper Snoop Dogg released a music NFT through an open release on Sound.xyz over the weekend, selling almost 10,500 NFTs worth around $8 ETH each.
However, some worry that the open-issue trend is a bubble that could hurt traders when it pops. As for checks, the first coins sold for just $8 each, but secondary sales command over $4,000 in ETH as of this writing. People who buy in at or near the top (wherever it may land) hoping to turn around for a profit can get burned.
“People move from fight to fight here,” Proof co-founder and NFT collector Kevin Rose said on his 100 Proof podcast last week. He added that gamified open issues “dominate NFT mindshare right now,” concluding, “I’m worried that it’s not going to end well, and it rarely does.”
The debate over the rising valuations of open-end NFTs has been a Crypto Twitter support in recent weeks, with many artists and notable collectors simply suggesting that people don’t buy anything for the speculative potential – just buy art you like from creators you want to support. But soaring secondary sales prices show that the hype still makes for expensive pickups.
Web3 startup manifold creates customizable smart contracts-which holds the code that drives decentralized apps and NFT projects – and has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of the open source boom. Approximately 223 million NFTs have been claimed via Manifold coins, per on-chain data curated by Duneincluding many of the largest recent open editions.
Manifold co-founder Eric Diep told Decrypt that the speculation rush may not last long, but that open issues are fueling affordable NFT collecting like never before. Even if prices don’t continue to rise, he still believes that the broader trend will grow – and that there will be even more open issues in a year than there are today.
“It is most likely that this is going to be a bubble that will flatten in a few weeks from now,” Diep said. “But the baseline is going to improve, and I think the long-term trend is steadily increasing.”
Between accessible coin fees, game-like mechanics that attract attention and help increase resale prices, and an open culture to embrace derivative riffs, Bonner said the open edition is just the right antidote for an NFT space that was stuck in declining sales and prices large parts of last year.
“It’s fun and it’s smart and it’s easy,” Bonner shared Decrypt“and that’s something the space really needed.”
