In recent years, memes have evolved beyond cat pictures and failed videos that cause people to laugh every now and then. As a way of achieving a kind of universal language, memes have captured the attention of the mainstream and popular culture, contrary to internet culture’s often flippant nature. The meme phenomenon is also prevalent in the NFT space, where memes are created, shared, and sold for enormous amounts of money. Web3, with its off-kilter, self-deprecating, and occasionally even nonsensical nature, would remain nothing without memes that diffuse and distill humor. There is one project that has begun to stand out among the Rare Pepes and mfers who populate Web3’s comedy annals. In spite of its youth, The Memes by 6529 engages the community in a conversation about decentralization, community, and self-sovereignty by bringing collaborative humor to the blockchain.
Twitter has become an increasingly popular place for NFT collectors to discuss their buying and selling activities and offers trading advice. Additionally, many collectors have begun launching new projects with their large audiences. Punk6529, an insider of NFT, did exactly that.
In a recent tweet, they announced that the entire NFT collection would be available in a metaverse museum district. Some of the world’s most expensive NFTs will be on display in the sprawling district. It is planned that OM will eventually support a virtual population of 100 million users, ranging from Bored Apes to CryptoPunks to ArtBlocks.
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An open metaverse is the goal of Punk6529.
The future is being lived by Punk6529 today. Imagining a future in which everyone has digital avatars that can glide effortlessly into the metaverse like a bird, at least according to the pseudonymous token collector. According to him, he’s a cartoon punk running around, participating in communities and societies, just like he does in the real world. As Punk6529 advocates, writes about and builds this new frontier, he is selling himself short by just “participating” in it.
Punk6529, whose name comes from a CryptoPunk NFT, unveiled an online NFT museum and a blueprint for an online city called the Open Metaverse. It is more likely that most people will know him for his often-long Twitter threads, in which he argues for the need for cryptocurrency and which he sends out to nearly half a million followers.
It is imperative that we move now toward an open, interoperable future,” he said. Punk6529 wouldn’t disagree if that sounded like something cypherpunks would say. In addition to collecting NFTs, he has also established a reputation as a leading futurist, speaking on podcasts with luminaries such as Rafael Pal and Laura Shin (often using a voice modulator).
In addition to his background in tech and finance, Punk6529 has a deep understanding of crypto and its importance today. According to him, the world is increasingly becoming digital through a dependency on “persistent digital objects.” It will be very important in a decade to decide what the standard platform or API will be for the metaverse. It will be the same sort of scenario that exists today if it’s a Facebook API or an Apple API,” he said. Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s stated intention to build an interoperable metaverse, there are reasons to doubt it.
This has led Punk6529 to self-fund a number of projects intended to onboard users into the crypto-based metaverse. In April, he introduced the Open Metaverse’s free-to-roam museum district, which has what he calls “the most high-end art NFTs ever exhibited in one place.” In the future, he wants to have “100,000,000 participants playing with an NFT.”
An open, scalable digital environment where anyone can build without any centralized control. The NFT category has been referred to as an “investment in the public” by Punk6529, yet he believes that all “intangible goods” could ultimately be on a blockchain by the year 80 trillion.
According to his OpenSea profile, punk6529 owns over 850 NFTs. But that doesn’t include the hundreds of dollars he has in his museum wallet. Punk’s holdings were valued this year at as much as $20 million.
The little details he chose to reveal about Punk6529’s IRL alter ego are all that we know about him. In the past, he was an avid Bitcoin maximalist, living in the heart of downtown New York City near Tompkins Square Park. It might be hard to tell him from CryptoPunk 6529, but he admits that he looks pretty similar to him.
A district that will grow into many more
In addition to OM, Punk6529 also plans to develop a world-building engine based on Web3 called OnCyber. The ultimate goal is to build an ‘Open Metaverse’ that anybody can access and contribute to. The 6529 Museum District project has officially entered its alpha phase with the launch of the 6529 Museum District.
In keeping with its name, Punk6529 and the rest of the team hope OM’s pilot launch will be indicative of what it will eventually become: an open, inclusive space built by the community. “I am collecting in public, I am investing in public, and we are determined to build OM together in public,” Punk6529 said on Twitter. This open-building process will incorporate pieces from the 6529 Museum District. Visitors will be drawn to the museum first by the fine collections of some of the most expensive NFTs on display, but they will also be able to exhibit NFTs from their own collections.
At the moment, there are about 2000 NFTs on display that belongs to Punk6529 or other members of the project’s team. It is expected that these numbers will increase in the future as more and more guests flock to this virtual space due to the planned open structure of the museum district.
Space that serves a purpose
The current plan for OM is to conduct a massive online experiment. The purpose of this project is to find whether a functional, self-sustaining, community-built space can thrive within the metaverse. It is important for Punk6529 to answer a seemingly innocuous but nonetheless fundamental question during the alpha phase: will people enjoy hanging out there?
It is possible for a digital city to develop further if a significant number of people answer yes to that question. After that, the governing and economic questions become more important. Funding, however, is already certain about the project.
Although Punk6529 intends for OM to remain a brand-neutral space independent of corporate interference, they have made it very clear online that it will not be used as a revenue generator.
What might end up as a virtual city of 100 million people can’t be completely controlled or owned by a single entity, not even OM’s creators. In that regard, the alpha and beta phases will prove crucial for determining how the virtual space will be able to sustain itself over the years and reach its lofty goals. After all the pieces are in place, Punk6529 hopes OM will fully reflect Web3’s ideals.
The purveyor of Memes, Punk6529. Who is he?
A collection of NFT memes curated by prominent thought leader and Web3 builder 6529, The Memes by 6529 is perhaps the most straightforward naming we’ve seen recently for an NFT collection. While the collection may appear as a random mishmash of memes to some, it is one of the fundamental elements of 6529 and Open Metaverse (OM).
Understanding the project’s full scope begins with understanding its creator. Basically, 6529 (also known as Punk6529) is a Web3 thought leader and a voice of wisdom for NFT. His philosophical Twitter threads and his advocacy for artists gained him notoriety as a high-level NFT collector by 2021, making him one of the 2022 NFT 100 honorees.
In the fall of 2021 and winter of 2022, 6529 underwent a profound transformation from an NFT collector to a mission-driven builder. As a proponent of an open metaverse in opposition to centralized and corporate players, it is based on the belief that “100 million people can create a better world in an open metaverse.” OM and 6529 are currently hosting crypto-art exhibitions and providing educational opportunities. The Memes play an important role here. The Memes is proving to be a powerful tool for 6529, who has established himself as a driving force behind the open metaverse movement.
Keeping this in mind, 6529 has maintained a low barrier to entry by maintaining a large and affordable edition size for The Memes, allowing anyone to join the cause.
How can The Memes be practically defined?
Despite its multi-level, multi-season nature, The Memes combines humor with collaboration and Web3 messaging. It was launched on June 9, 2022. Although the idea (and the name) get their inspiration from Marxist ideologies – specifically, the notion that workers must take control of land, labor, and capital to collapse capitalism.”
The phrase has been satirized and transformed into Web3 ideologies in the NFT community, emphasizing meme culture’s role in driving blockchain communities. Creators and artists use the memes of production to build a new creative economy, giving power back to the creative working classes via blockchain technology. Although it’s high-level, 6529’s The Memes reduces it to memes, art, and vibes.
A complete season of memes is included in the Memes collection, which consists of eight memes with two to eleven limited-edition NFTs per meme. A meme (prompt) can be thought of as a prompt, and the artists who contribute to The Memes aim to display that prompt through their NFT.
The Memes has invited artists of all creeds to submit NFTs. In spite of its humble beginnings, the project has grown to include works by many artists, including photographers, illustrators, 3D artists, and even legendary NFT artists like XCOPY, in addition to 6529er — the multidisciplinary designer who developed the 6529 logos. Every meme featured in The Memes is related to NFT or crypto culture in some way.
The Future of The Memes by 6529
It’s becoming obvious that The Memes will continue to take advantage of decentralized creativity and diversity throughout season two. A sort of trojan horse NFT project, The Memes continues to generate hype with new contributions from artists such as Cath Simard and Grant Riven Yun.
In the eyes of the outsider, The Memes appears like any other popular venture, in which price increases generate hype and enhance trading. Although the Memes resemble the core concepts of the blockchain initially, a closer examination reveals a meaningful connection.
There may be a reason why The Memes keep gaining popularity. Obtaining the complete set of NFT memes, which means one of each meme released, has become somewhat of a legend just over half a year after they were released. The Memes have gained in value recently after a CryptoPunk was exchanged for a complete set, giving us an idea of their increasing value.
Although sales prices for nearly all editions of The Memes’ catalog have increased, its creator warns against becoming a meme holder for profit alone. In a tweet, 6529 reminded his followers not to “buy meme cards to ‘make money,’” but rather “because ownership gives you a sense of identity and you want to support the mission.”
Conclusion
In the past decade, in particular, but also over the past 20-30 years, memes have become one of the most popular features of internet culture. It’s no secret that a broad audience is aware of what memes are and regularly shares them on social media.
Despite this, as we’ve seen in the past, meme culture might not wholly carry over to web3 and NFTs as we know them today. Memes connected to the industry appear on Twitter from time to time, whether they show working, transacting, or otherwise dealing in the industry.
‘The Memes’ collection has been doing well since it launched this year and was featured on OpenSea’s trending page last year, leading to an upward spike in sales. Marketing and unique selling points are essential to maintaining a name and value for any project.
Hi, my name is Brandan Henry, and I’m an NFT, Blockchain, and Research enthusiast, as well as a content writer for NFT-onomics. I’m deeply passionate about exploring the potential of NFTs and blockchain technology. My mission is to educate people on the capabilities of non-fungible tokens and their applications. I stay up-to-date with the latest NFT news and trends, and as a full-time writer, I excel at generating creative, out-of-the-box ideas surrounding NFTs.