Pepe goes to Ethereum
Rare Pepes is one of the most culturally significant NFT collections in crypto. It was born in 2016 on Counterparty, a protocol that stores information on bitcoin transactions, akin to a Bitcoin Layer 2, many years before the first boom of NFTs happened on Ethereum. Bitcoin pioneers merged two of their passions: tinkering with blockchain technology and frog-based memes, and that’s how Rare Pepes came to life.
A little bit of History
The original Rare Pepe collection consists of 1774 unique cards, with supplies that range from one to millions, that took a snapshot of the political, cultural, and technological moment.
Years went by, and NFTs became a building block of the modern crypto ecosystem. A place where art, technology, collecting, entrepreneurial spirit, and speculation meet. Today NFTs are a powerhouse of creativity and crypto adoption. But nobody knew that in 2016. People were fooling around. That’s why Pepes are so special.
Rare Pepes raised a community of artists and collectors that continued memeing hard in new secondary collections, the most popular ones Fake Rares, Dank Rares, and Fake Commons. All collections share the same ethos: anyone can submit a card to a collection by abiding by a set of soft rules enforced by a team of curators called Scientists. Cards need to have a specific format, and be sensible in content (trolling, bad taste are welcome, and NSFW content, too, to some extent), and artists must follow through a minting ritual that usually involves purchasing and burning a card.
The whole process takes place on Counterparty, and users rely on FreeWallet as their primary tool: both Counterparty and FreeWallet are clunky tools from early bitcoin times with awful UX. Something that has kept Pepe collecting on the sidelines of the massive NFT waves and, at the same time, has safeguarded the purity of the community. The Counterparty DNA makes the Pepe community different. Pepe lovers are highly engaged with the collection (no one would bear the process otherwise) and are incredibly welcoming, collaborative, and helpful.
Notable Pepes: A Pepe Collection on Ethereum
But today, we’re witnessing the birth of Notable Pepes: an exciting new collection of Pepe NFTs set to be issued on the Ethereum blockchain. The time is right, but the process is too.
Notable Pepes open the gates of Pepe to the mass of Ethereum NFT collectors, while preserving the original ethos of the Pepe collections: they are meme based and creatively open-minded, while they respect the collector and artist experience.
The collection is championed by legendary NFT collector Vincent Van Dough and will consist of an indefinite number of series, each featuring 50 cards. Initially, the cards will be created by relevant Pepe and Ethereum artists. Still, eventually, the collection will be open for submissions from any artist willing to contribute, just like the last Pepe series*.
Every week, five cards from the collection will be put up for sale. Each card will have a supply of between 100 and 1000 copies, and the price of each copy will always be 0.069ETH.
However, card purchases will be gated: collectors can only acquire cards by being granted access to an allowlist through a lottery. To participate in the lottery, collectors must own one or more NFT Pepe Checks, a card that doubles as #1 of the Notables collection, and a lottery ticket. Each Pepe Check gives the owner address one opportunity to win a spot in the allowlist for purchasing a Notable Pepe card.
This approach aims to balance making the collection successful in terms of sales while prioritizing access to engaged collectors. It also helps to ensure that the value of the cards remains high since only a limited number of people will be able to purchase them initially.
The time was right for Pepe to explore new frontiers outside of Counterparty.
*Art submissions are also gated, like in previous Pepe collections. Learn about the process and the role of Pepe Cheques in Pepe.wtf’s Book of Kek.
