[72] Opepen: Choose Your Own Path
[Mechanism Design, Preference Stacks]
GM Readers!
Essay 72 dives deeper in the Opepen art project’s mechanism design. Good mechanism design helps generate attention and engagement for a project and allows different members of a diverse community to participate in the way that matches their preference stack (set of preferences).
Hope you enjoy!
P.S. this essay won’t cover the recent Checks Element auction or go too deep into specific mechanisms, more on that at a later date. ✌️
-LJW
(P.S. For the summary and further breakdown of this essay, follow me on Twitter)
Relevant Essay:
🎨 Life in Color Relevant Essays: [Infinite Design Space] + [The Checks Meta] + [The Opepen Meta]
SHAMELESS Ask:
🙏 Share Life in Color with a friend and ask them to subscribe
🙏 Share on Twitter / Linkedin with a short note
🙏 Share on your company Slack / Teams channels and communities
Mechanism Design
The goal of mechanism design in NFT projects is to construct a set of rules and incentives that align individual behavior with the broader objectives of the project.
It is the art of creating frameworks that allow different people to participate in a particular project. Good mechanism design maximizes things like optionality, transparency, novelty, etc … to keep the process enjoyable while guiding everyone towards a common goal.
Balancing novelty with complexity is essential.
Overly complex mechanisms become inaccessible for many, while overly simplistic ones lack excitement that comes from novelty.
✅
Opepen Mechanisms
Opepen has a series of unique mechanics, giving holders optionality and diverse pathways to participate.
The key mechanisms in Opepen may appear simple - the NFTs go from unrevealed to revealed - but it's a much more intricate process than what meets the eye.
Let’s go through the mechanisms.
The Sets Mechanism
Opepen is a 16K NFT collection that is further divided into a bunch of sub-collections called Sets, where each Set has a total of 80 NFTs.
The difference across each Set is that a different artist will create the art for a particular Set. Since Opepen is a framework of recognizable shapes, each Set becomes a canvas for a specific artist to reimagine and manifest their artwork onto the Opepen framework. [See my last essay to learn more about Opepen as a framework]
For example, Set 001 (the first set) is the “Jack Butcher” collection.
Set 003 is the Batz Collection
This paves the way for Butcher and team to curate different artists and include them into the Opepen community more formally through a collaboration.
Any artist can bring their art and personality into a defined framework that already has a fledgling community behind it.
All in all, there will be 200 sets of Opepens with 80 NFTs in each set. This means there is an opportunity for Butcher and team to collaborate with close to 200 different artists.
This is a core concept of Opepen — creating a canvas that anyone can reimagine their art onto. By having the opportunity to bring in ~200 artists, the Sets mechanism expands the surface area for attention, but does so in a collaborative way.
With 200 sets and a wide variety of artists that will be featured, there is a little bit of something for everyone.
✅
The Rarity Mechanism
Out of the 16K Opepen NFTs, rarity breaks down as follows:
Forty: Total of 8,000 NFTs
Twenty: Total of 4,000 NFTs
Ten: Total of 2,000 NFTs
Five: Total of 1,000 NFTs
Four: Total of 800 NFTs
One: Total of 200 NFTs
For example, the “One” NFTs are the most rare and represent the 1 of 1s in a particular Set of 80 NFTs.
Rarity is an important concept not just in NFT collections but across anything that is collectible. In every community of collectors, there are those collectors who value having the rare ones. Generally they are worth more… But their value might be derived from more than the monetary value — there is also the signaling value (commonly known as “the flex.”)
✅
The Reveal Mechanism
To go from an unrevealed Opepen NFT to a revealed Opepen NFT, the holder has to opt into a Set.
If the Set gets less than 200% opt-in at each rarity level, then the Set will not launch.
For example, if Butcher pitches a Set with Artist A, and not enough (does not meet the 200% threshold) unrevealed Opepen NFTs opt-in to that collection, then the Set does not proceed to launch and a new artist collaboration gets pitched.
The opt-in mechanism gives the community power to decide what they like (or not like) by voting with their NFTs on which Sets they want to see included into the collection.
But this isn’t solely a community decision because ultimately Butcher is the curator of which artists are presented for opt-in.
It’s a bit of a symbiotic relationship: trust the founders to curate but let the holders ultimately decide — a bottom up x top down collaboration.
This is also a great way to test demand for something but in a way that is novel and fun. Rather than rush towards some arbitrary timeline of reveal at the risk of alienating the community and holders’ collective preferences, the best way to square this circle is simply to ask the community.
Ultimately this ensures that the artists featured in the Sets is what the community wants.
✅
Game Theory
When you combine and multiply the 3 core mechanisms together, there feels like an infinite number of (different) preference stacks for each person.
This is what I call Infinite Design Space — many different pathways on how to participate.
In a diverse community, everyone has a different preference stack (set of preferences). The Opepen mechanics allow different people to participate the way they want. But at the same time the community also needs to feel cohesive. The risk with 200 Sets is that it starts to feel like 200 different communities. But as I covered last week, the Opepen Framework is the meta protocol that brings all the Opepen images and broader community together.
So with these mechanics, each holder has to think through their preferences and unwind the game theory for themselves.
Perhaps this is a bit too meta… but Butcher has said “art is about asking questions…”
The best questions don’t have clear answers — they are about preferences versus definitive yes/no outcomes.
With that let’s look at some of the key decisions holders can make.
✅
Opt In Earlier vs Waiting to Opt In
The early bird gets the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.
As a holder with a limited number of unrevealed Opepens, do you opt-in to the earlier sets editions like Set 001 or do you wait for the later sets, like Set 200?
Dilemma:
Being First: If you believe that the earlier editions might hold more value because they are the “firsts” in the collection, you might rush to opt-in. For those that value being the first in anything, they will opt-in into an earlier collection.
Waiting: But if you believe that the later collections will be even better because maybe Butcher is saving his best for last, you might hold onto your unrevealed Opepens. But what if the last sets are just going to stay unrevealed forever?
Of course, the choice isn’t binary.
If you opt-in into the earlier sets, and you want more, you can also buy more of the unrevealed Opepens, but it’s an ever dwindling supply.
The appeal of each Set falls on a different preference stack for each person.
There is no right answer here and that is sort of the point … follow your own preference but also allow others to follow theirs.
✅
Choosing Which Artist to Support
Is a bird in hand indeed worth two in the bush?
Dilemma: If you see a Set by an artist you like, do you opt-in or do you wait?
Remember 200 Sets is a lot of artists.
Let’s say there is an upcoming set where you sort of love the artist, but maybe it’s not your all-time-absolute favorite artist. Do you opt-in?
If you don’t opt-in, how do you know that your favorite artist will even get a collaboration in this collection?
For example: If Butcher presents Artist A in Set 005, and Artist A is not your number one choice but you kind of like Artist A … do you wait for your top choice, say Artist D? (Artist D may not get featured.)
But what if you go for Artist A and then Artist D comes up later and the price of the unrevealed Opepens have gone up?
As a holder, if you are looking to support a specific artist, you have to think about your preference stack and then hope that the artists on your preference stack are also going to be featured.
Also remember there is no guarantee that because you opt-in to a particular set that you will get picked to reveal your Opepen either.
Or… maybe none of this matters.
Maybe it’s as simple as, if you love the art a particular artist is putting forth in a Set, then just opt-in. But “loving the art” might not be your top priority.
Again there is no right answer here and that is sort of the point … many types of communities members can exist.
✅
Staying Unrevealed
What is the element of surprise worth?
Then there are others who might just choose to play the simple supply and demand game. Some might place more value on something that is unrevealed and keep the element of surprise.
With each revealed Set, the unrevealed Opepen supply decreases by 80.
Some might want to hold onto their unrevealed Opepen NFTs in that hopes that the dwindling supply drives up prices. But the market can also behave the opposite way and value the certainty of the revealed Opepens.
Of course, Butcher and team can also introduce new surprise elements themselves in the later Sets that changes all of this.
Again there is no right answer here and that is sort of the point … it’s hard to predict what elements a community values and the signals of value evolve over time.
Choose Your Own Path
These are just some of the more obvious ways to think about how the different Opepen mechanisms come together. There are definitely more nuanced ways to think about this.
The broader point is that all of these pathways exist because of design choices the team made. It walks a fine line between being overly complex that it’s not fun and being too simple that it lacks novelty.
The key to designing a good/fun community experience is minimizing the feeling of loss. When there is no feeling of loss, you encourage others to root for the winners, which creates this positive community flywheel.
The Opepen mechanics come together in such a way that no one is wrong but no one is right either.
Butcher and team’s approach highlights how good mechanism design is core to keeping attention and driving engagement in decentralized communities.
Attention and engagement amongst a decentralized community are inherently coordination games — the interplay between serving as many unique preference stacks as possible but still driving a carefully curated artistic vision.
In this world that Butcher is building, choosing your own adventure is the best path to take — perhaps that’s the best attention grabbing mechanism there is.
🛟 Disclaimer:
This post is provided for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing written in this post should be taken as financial advice or advice of any kind. The author(s) may own some of the NFTs, art and/or collectibles mentioned in this post. The content of this post are the opinions of the authors and not representative of other parties.
Empower yourself, DYOR (do your own research).