An NFT project making waves recently is The Memes by 6529, and if you wanted to sum it up in a few words, you could say it’s all about memes, the metaverse, community, JPEGs, art and freedom.
The Memes is part of a project called Open Metaverse, which is aiming to create a fully decentralized, community-driven metaverse, in contrast to the kind of corporate-controlled walled garden that might, potentially, be established by a company like Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.
Open Metaverse definitely stays true to the original spirit of crypto, and it was launched by a key player in the NFT world known as Punk6529.
Who is Punk6529?
Known only by his pseudonym, which comes from the CryptoPunk he uses as a PFP, 6529 is an investor and art collector, with a highly valued NFT vault, a large Twitter following, and significant influence.
He’s well versed in finance and tech, and is known for his extended Twitter threads, which are both philosophical and practical in nature, and tend to revolve around NFTs and crypto, the metaverse, and art, but also take in the nature of wealth and other reflections on, well, life in general.
A core part of 6529’s message is that as the world turns increasingly digital and the metaverse expands, NFTs–which allow for independent ownership of digital objects–are a vital part of the future. He argues that memes are incredibly powerful, and insists that having the freedom to transact is critical to maintaining an open society.
Transacting freely is part of why Bitcoin was launched back in 2009, but 6529–an early adopter of BTC–is no longer a maxi, and identifies NFTs and the metaverse as crucial to how we’ll interact in the future.
How Do The Memes NFTs Work?
The Memes is an extensive, still-incomplete collection within the Open Metaverse project. There are two seasons, within each season there are eight meme themes (with names such as Seize the Memes of Production, Don’t Let the Institutions Steal Your JPEGs, and–particularly good advice–Use a Hardware Wallet), and within each theme, there are cards.
The cards are the NFTs, and each different card is a limited supply artwork drop, with various artists contributing to the project. Some cards are by 6529 himself, some are by project artist 6529er, and there have been some famous names from the NFT art world involved, including XCOPY and, recently, Grant Riven Yun.
A purpose of the collection is, as the name suggests, to spread memetic ideas, which mainly relate to digital liberty, along with the most positively-charged aspects of NFT culture. The project encourages the use of its images to create spin-off works (referred to as ReMemes), and the artwork is all CC0 (meaning it’s in the public domain and can be used by anyone).
What’s Coming Up?
The Memes is currently executing Season 2, and is dropping new card collections three times a week. Recent, highly anticipated drops included work from 6529er, and Renga creator Daniel Isles, also known as Dirty Robot.
To keep up to date with upcoming card drops and how to mint them, follow the 6529 Collections account, along with Punk6529 himself. Drops vary in their supply (there were usually fewer than 1,000 of each card in Season 1, but Season 2 drops have been larger), while the cost is always 0.06529 ETH for each NFT.
In each drop there is a limited allowlist mint, followed by a public mint, along with some airdropped cards. Allowlist criteria vary from drop to drop, but generally require holding either work by the current artist, previous Meme Cards, or other NFTs from the Open Metaverse collections.
Demand is high, though, and supply is limited, so if you can’t mint from the drop, then higher prices on secondary are the remaining option.
Sales and Prices
The first Memes drop was in June 2022, but sales volumes really picked up a lot from December, and surged in the middle of this month when Grant Riven Yun produced a piece of art for the collection, bringing more eyes onto the project as a whole.
Prices have also gone up recently, with average sales on OpenSea climbing from less than 0.3 ETH throughout last June, to currently, around 1.2 ETH. It should be noted, though, that prices vary a lot from card to card, depending on the artist and how large the supply is.
The cheapest listing at the moment is the FirstGM card, at 0.54 ETH, while the most expensive is NakamotoFreedom at 36 ETH.
What Does the Future Hold?
The Memes, as part of the Open Metaverse, is an ambitious, open-ended project with high-minded aims. It’s futuristic, and it wants to change the internet, or art, or money, or it might even be aiming at the entire world.
Maybe it will achieve everything it tilts at, maybe it will mutate and create impacts it hasn’t even thought of yet, or, alternatively, it might take a niche slot in the experimental section of art and tech history: a curiosity from that time when NFT fiends thought they could reinvent the web.
Whatever the outcome might eventually be, there’s no doubt that The Memes right now are catchy and hit the right notes, the art keeps coming, and interest continues to rise as their ideas percolate.
Sam is a qualified journalist from the UK who covers NFTs, Bitcoin, and the cryptocurrency world.
He believes NFTs are about far more than just JPEGs, and web3 is going to be transformative, but recognizes the value in a good quality meme and a well-drawn ape.
