Rarepepe: How pepes have been made provably uncommon on the bitcoin blockchain, and what it has meant for NFT tradition and know-how
Rarepepe is commonly credited as being the NFT challenge that gave beginning to cryptoart. The historical past of Pepe the Frog and the Rarepepe challenge encapsulates themes and material vital to the event and historical past of the 21st century, particularly concerning web tradition and its intersection with politics, society, know-how, and artwork. As such, Rarepepe acts as a prism via which we will perceive a lot of who we’re and the way we acquired right here over the previous 2 a long time. It’s a closeup snapshot and portrait of what’s going to be remembered as a essential turning level for mankind. It is singular as a challenge inside the NFT area. Not solely is it one of many first NFT initiatives ever, it has a number of different distinctive attributes. It was minted on the Bitcoin blockchain utilizing the Counterparty protocol, which was an vital innovation in and of itself. The artwork is solely person generated from the Rarepepe neighborhood over the course of two years (2016-2018). It has 1774 distinctive playing cards, every with their very own issuance making all the variety of out there belongings fairly massive. It incorporates many ‘firsts’ within the NFT area: first music embedded in an NFT; first NFT bonus content material; first NFT used as a forex; a number of the first GIFs minted as NFTs. 
Rarepepe was the primary NFT challenge to riff on varied cultural topic issues, together with politics, sports activities, cartoons, fantastic artwork, motion pictures, the financial system, and naturally, cryptocurrency. As the well-known crypto artist recognized for his glitch model XCOPY as soon as tweeted, “whenever you think you’re first, check if rare pepes did it years ago” 3/17/21. The challenge’s provenance is wealthy and timeless, which makes it probably the most fascinating issues occurring within the NFT area. I hope you take pleasure in studying concerning the historical past and provenance of this outstanding motion in blockchain artwork.
The History of Pepe the Frog
It all began in 2005 with the creation of the Boy’s Club comedian by artist Matt Furie. Boy’s Club is a collection of 4 comedian books that “showcase slacker roommates Andy, Brett, Landwolf, and Pepe in a series of comical vignettes combining laconic psychedelia, childlike enchantment, drug-fueled hedonism, and impish mischief.” They’re nice. They seize a sure disillusionment felt by many older millennials coming of age and beginning careers within the mid 2000’s. In Boy’s Club 2, Furie depicts a state of affairs during which Pepe is seen peeing along with his pants pulled all the way in which all the way down to the ground, how kids typically pee. He is later confronted by his buddy Landwolf – the significantly boisterous and off-color member of the troupe – who says “Hey Pepe – I heard you pull yer pants down all the way to go pee” to which Pepe responds along with his basic line “feels good man.” It’s this vignette, and particularly the road “feels good man,” that spawned a thousand memes and has continued to outline meme tradition to at the present time.
Furie posted this strip on Myspace the place it was shortly picked up and proliferated throughout the web. Hundreds of hundreds of iterations have been created and shared throughout Myspace, Gaia Online, reddit, 4chan, and web chat rooms. Pepe grew to become a medium to precise emotion and reactions to private experiences and du jour information objects. It grew to become so pervasive that in the event you don’t learn about Pepe, its since you are too younger, too previous, or have been residing below a rock since 2008. Pepe’s solely actual modern with as a lot notoriety is Wojak, aka Feels Guy, and the 2 are sometimes paired collectively to precise all the complement of web feelings.
Pepe Develops a Life of its Own
Such fame didn’t come and not using a darkish facet. As Pepe proliferated throughout the web, the well-known frog additionally discovered an uncomfortable house in alt-right white nationalist 4chan boards. Pepe grew to become such a strong material medium that Pepe memes have been used as a canine whistle by President Trump to sign acceptance and assist of those teams. In 2015, Donald Trump retweeted a illustration of himself as Pepe that originated in an alt-right 4chan discussion board, supposedly as a clarion name of solidarity with them and the views expressed of their neighborhood. The white supremacist Richard B. Spencer wore a pin of Pepe on his jacket within the well-known video of him being punched within the face. Hilary Clinton’s marketing campaign cited Pepe as a logo related to white supremacy, and the Anti-Defamation League subsequently included Pepe in its database of hate symbols.
Matt Furie was decidedly upset about how Pepe was getting used and took to defending Pepe. He efficiently sued Alex Jones for his copyright infringing use in merchandise. He fought the Anti-Defamation League, requesting to have Pepe faraway from its record of hate symbols. Unfortunately these efforts failed. In 2017, as a part of Free Comic Book Day, Furie symbolically killed Pepe in a comic book strip to voice his objection to Pepe’s use as a hate image.
The historical past of Pepe the Frog as a comic book and meme was brilliantly captured in a documentary titled “Feels Good Man” which received an Emmy in October of 2021 for Best Documentary. It’s a fantastically accomplished work that I extremely suggest.
JPEG Trading Kicks Off
In a parallel universe, whereas Pepe was taking up an outsized position within the tapestry of American politics and web tradition, early advances in blockchain know-how have been beginning to take form. One motif in ‘Pepe twenty-teens memery’ was the idea of rareness. It was an in-joke the place Pepe memers claimed to have the rarest pepes, replete with admonition that nobody ought to steal their pepe memes. The joke got here to a head when memers began promoting pepe jpegs on ebay in 2015, though it’s a matter of debate whether or not precise gross sales occurred. At the time, the flexibility to ‘right-click save’ prevented digital shortage, and therefor true possession of digital items. Sure, you possibly can be cited because the creator and as creator you obtained copyright over your photographs, however provable possession of a digital good was nonetheless past mainstream attain. That all modified with the blockchain, which made possession of digital items, whether or not cash, tokens, or NFTs provably scarce. In 2014 Kevin McCoy created the primary proto-NFT titled “Quantum” on
Namecoin, the primary Bitcoin fork. This accomplishment was a monumental shift within the idea of provable possession of digital items, and the primary occasion of a non-fungible digital “token” was created – though the time period NFT was nonetheless some years away. The web site https://nfttimeline.com/ is a wonderful useful resource for navigating the earliest situations of NFTs and NFT-like digital objects. Similarly, the twitter person @wrabbit1111 has put collectively a superb infographic describing the pre-Ethereum “digital antiquities” market.
One of the primary platforms that enabled the creation of non-fungible tokens was Counterparty. It was developed in 2014 through the use of a ‘proof-of-burn’ mechanism whereby 2,140 Bitcoin – roughly $1.8M in USD on the time – have been burned as a way to situation XCP, Counterparty’s native token. The first massive scale challenge to situation NFTs on the Counterparty platform was Spells of Genesis, the primary blockchain based mostly cell sport ever made, pioneered by the visionary Shaban Shaame (@shaban_shaame).
Rarepepe Makes its Mark on the Blockchain
The second massive scale NFT challenge to emerge on Counterparty is the topic of this text: Rarepepe. The skill to create actually uncommon Pepes with provable digital shortage and possession took the uncommon pepe joke and turned it on its head. 
Pepe memes may now be created in a manner that made their possession and provenance provable and scarce, and therefor purchased and bought in markets. Following the Spells of Genesis lead, a gaggle of cypherpunks and early bitcoin adopters created a platform for the minting and sale of actually uncommon pepes. In 2016, Joe Looney (@wasthatawolf) forked Freewallet’s code to create a rarepepe pockets (rarepepewallet.com), a market for getting and promoting these digital artifacts. It was one of many first platforms that enabled folks to transact digital artworks. The first rarepepe card titled ‘rarepepe’ was designed and issued by “Mike” (@rarepepe) on September 9th, 2016, and is now known as ‘the Nakamoto Card.’ It is broadly considered an NFT grail by collectors for its historic significance and commonly sells for for tons of of hundreds of {dollars}, however there being 299 in existence. It encompasses a hand drawn portrait of Dorian Nakamoto – one of many first folks publicly hypothesized to be Satoshi Nakomoto, though who’s decidedly not the founding father of Bitcoin – with basic inexperienced Pepe pores and skin tone and vibrant pink lips.
Since issuance of the Nakamoto Card, 1773 further playing cards have been created by the rarepepe neighborhood. The course of was easy: members of the unique telegram group would submit proposed rarepepes, whereas a cadre of rarepepe “scientists” would approve or reject the submissions. There have been some primary restrictions reminiscent of protecting the work SFW, locking the issuance provide, they usually needed to have a 400×560 side ratio. The neighborhood artwork challenge caught on, receiving submissions from artists everywhere in the world. It was a factor. In the tip, 36 collection have been created containing 1774 playing cards. All collection contained 50 playing cards except for collection 36, the final collection, which incorporates solely 24 playing cards. Each of the 1774 distinctive playing cards have a singular variety of issuances, starting from 1 (of which solely 7 playing cards have been created with 1 issuance) to 1 Trillion, a distinction held by the PEPEREPUBLIC card. Needless to say, there’s a whole lot of data to digest and understanding the market requires a great deal of fortitude and dedication, in addition to familiarity with some particular web sites and instruments (which shall be defined in one other article). The paintings ranges from skilled to decidedly beginner. The material spans the spectrum, however is a singular snapshot of memeable material and beliefs particular to cypherpunk aesthetics from 2016 -2018. There are a variety of rarepepe artists who have been significantly prolific in the course of the minting days, lots of whom are at the moment influential crypto artists and proceed to form the crypto artwork area typically. https://pepe.wtf is a wonderful instrument to discover the work of those early pioneers and study concerning the historical past of the challenge. After completion of the ultimate card, exercise within the rarepepespace died down for 2-3 years, with little exercise occurring and the neighborhood transferring onto different issues in the course of the bear market.
The Resurgence of Rarepepe
The rarepepe hibernation resulted in 2021, which was a get away yr for NFTs. While a lot of the grift and glam was occurring on the Ethereum blockchain with so referred to as 10k PFP initiatives reminiscent of Bored Ape Yacht Club, renewed curiosity in rarepepe quietly took maintain and galvanized the neighborhood and a brand new slate of collectors. In February of 2021, a well-known NFT collector pseudonymously named Mr703 – so referred to as as a result of he minted over 700 cryptopunks – poured a lot of his cryptopunk earnings into sweeping out there playing cards that remained on rarepepewallet, in addition to shopping for entire wallets from collectors for pennies on the greenback. In March, a 1 of 1 rarepepe referred to as Homerpepe bought at public sale for $320,000 to a now well-known collector named TokenAngels (@TokenAngels). July is when issues actually started to snowball, and a goldrush ensued the place OG rarepepe collectors and new collectors started scouring rarepepewallet for good offers. This pushed the worth of XCP – Counterparty’s native token – from $1.42 as much as a neighborhood excessive of $27.38 by mid-September. XCP at the moment trades at $2.91.
2021 noticed a variety of further vital occasions for the rarepepe area. One card “FEELSGOODMAN” (collection 20 card 50) was famously reserved for Matt Furie. Having demurred for a number of years, in September he lastly accomplished the paintings. This was a serious second for the neighborhood, and considerably scandalous. Furie had beforehand tried to implement copyrights to his pepe creation, which alienated some rarepepe neighborhood members who reject copyright regulation typically as a part of their crypto and inventive ethos. Although some controversy lingers round this piece, it was a second of celebration and the rarepepe cannon was lastly full. In October, the documentary “Feels Good Man” directed by Arthur Jones (@arthurjones) received a Best News and Documentary Emmy. A protocol referred to as Emblem Vault discovered methods to wrap rarepepes and different Counterparty belongings in a wrapper that made them appropriate with Ethereum, and due to this fact tradeable on marketplaces like OpenSea. Later that month, a one-of-one Rare Pepe referred to as PEPENOPOULOS bought at Sotheby’s for $3.6 million. Having damaged into the tradart world, rarepepe was formally an actual and vital set of collector’s objects. Since then, the bull market has subsided, however curiosity in rarepepe continues to develop. Values have held up remarkably properly, and new collectors are coming into the market, regardless of the technical hurdles required to navigate {the marketplace}.
Perhaps probably the most fascinating wrinkle in rarepepe is what is happening now. Since rarepepe’s resurgence, OG and new neighborhood members alike have begun beginning spinoff initiatives that pay homage to the unique. They are all neighborhood lead, with curatorial boards vetting artwork submitted by neighborhood members, minted on and bought via bitcoin utilizing Counterparty. 2022 noticed a proliferation of artwork on this area, and has attracted the contributions of some well-known and up and coming cypto artists. NFT artwork on Bitcoin is thus alive and properly, persevering with to innovate and convey its personal aesthetic and values to the blockchain. These initiatives shall be extra completely coated in future articles.
Feel free to observe me on Twitter @DanceTurn for normal updates, insights, and market evaluation within the rarepepe area.
Disclosure, I’ve been accumulating rarepepes since 2021.
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