Jack Butcher's Art Experiment

Breaking down Jack Butcher's on chain art experiment...

GM frens,

Earlier this week, Jack Butcher, the founder of Visualize Value, kicked off an art experiment that has successfully captured the attention of thousands of NFT collectors. 

In today's edition of The Ground Floor, I'll be breaking down why this project continues to captivate collectors, and the lessons we can learn from the project's early success story.

Jack Butcher's Art Experiment

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said another 10,000 PFPs"

The short history of the Web3 World has largely been defined by the success stories of 10,000 PFP projects such CryptoPunks, Bored Ape Yacht Club & Doodles. 

While these profile picture projects have succeeded in capturing consumers attention, the Web3 World has also unlocked significant sums of capital to support digital artists such as Amber Vittoria, Beeple, Tyler Hobs, FEWOCiOUS & many more.

Who Is Jack Butcher?

Best described by Nick Widmer as an "ad agency defector turned Web3 designer" — Jack spent 10 years working in Fortune 100 advertising in NYC as a designer, writer, strategist and art director for multi-billion dollar brands before embarking to build Visualize Value.

What is Visualize Value? 

Visualize Value is a modern education company designed to provide people with the frameworks and information they need to "maximize opportunity in the age of the internet."

A very key component of this coursework are the stunningly simplistic visuals Jack creates to better illustrate each point, such as the popular example below. 

At the request of his followers, Jack began minting these illustrations as NFTs in 2021 and auctioning them to the highest bidder — with the following illustration selling for a cool 74 ETH in March 2021 ~ over $110,000 at the time.

Creating Checks

Fast forward to last Tuesday, the 3rd of January 2023, Jack released an open edition (where the market would determine the quantity created) called Checks - VV Edition.

The artwork, inspired by Damien Hirst's The Currency, was an outstanding success, with collectors creating / minting a total of 16,027 Checks.

Candidly, as is always the case — you have no idea how the world will react to something you made, so that number could have also been very different.

— Jack Butcher

Gamification

While collectors such as myself minted this artwork for reasons related to our admiration of the artwork ~ 4 days later, Jack took to Twitter to update collectors on his planned approach to iterate on the existing artwork, and his thought process behind each decision.

This moment truly marked the beginning of what has since become one of the most interesting on chain art experiments I've personally seen to date.

What makes this experiment so interesting?

Expensive Experiments

First and foremost, this collection was made accessible to everyone.

In the Web3 World today, it has become all too common for collections that show any glimpses of gaining adoption to choose prohibitively high price points to participate in their projects — with projects often minting for hundreds, even thousands of dollars. 

This works great for those of us who have hundreds of dollars of disposable income to spend on speculative NFTs, however, it adds significant friction to any attempts to onboard the next million consumers to the Web3 world.

Jack eliminated this friction by selling checks for $8. 

Why choose $8?  

Captioned; "This artwork may or may not be notable" the initial aim of the project was to illustrate how people can currently pay $8 / month to purchase the status symbol of having a blue checkmark next to their name on Twitter.

Transparency Builds Trust 

While today's edition of TGF isn't a canvas to criticize the most common mistakes Web3 projects have made, Jack's decision to share his entire thought process behind each decision he was contemplating successfully solved a second problem. 

All too often in the Web3 world today, the people who build the projects we support seek to separate themselves from their collectors, and the decisions they make are often made without the consultation of the communities that bear the burden of these decisions.

In the 4 days since this experiment began, Jack has continuously taken to Twitter to transparently share his thought process to help collectors understand why any & all decisions are being made, and the expected outcome of these decisions.

This level of transparency builds invaluable trust. 

People become more bullish when you're really transparent and when you say, "Here are the things we're thinking about – we haven't quite figured out how to solve A, B, and C, so let's have a conversation."

— Christine Brown, COO, Floor

Realistic Expectations 

One of the most common traps the founders of Web3 project experience as the value of their NFTs increase? They scramble to scrape together a plan that supports these prices. 

Thankfully, Jack has not repeated this mistake.

Instead, he has successfully anchored collectors expectations of what will follow with the introduction of a burning mechanic that will allow collectors to effectively trade in the original artwork to in turn receive a new & improved check. 

This novel mechanic is best explained by Jack himself here, however, in summary it introduced all of the game theory required to:

•  Reward every original collector. 

•  Create new, original, on-chain artwork.  

•  Either maintain or reduce the supply of Checks.

📡 Looking Forward

This on chain art experiment exemplifies the creativity that has made the Web3 world one of the most exciting industries being built today. 

By making this experiment accessible to all, continuously communicating his planned approach to iterate on the original artwork, and by creating realistic expectations for collectors — Jack Butcher has hit yet another home run in Web3.

Web3 founders, please take notes.

💡 Web3 Roundup

Writers holdings: At the time of writing I own a 31 Checks ~ VV Edition.

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This newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or business advice to any person or entity.

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