No doubt Jack Butcher’s Checks VV takes over Web3. What began as an artistic experiment and social commentary on the concepts behind Web2 and Web3 has grown far beyond the walls of his own creation. At this point, Checks’ identity has appeared on derivative projects covering everything from early 2000s memes to Web3 tropes to classic art. The official Check the VV website features a page dedicated to these derivatives and currently displays 415 of them. Hell, even us gave our logo processing Checks VV.
Given the breadth and depth of Checks’ reach, we may be witnessing the Web3 story in the making. No other NFT effort has acted as such a broad canvas for the Web3 community to show off their creativity, raise money for humanitarian causes, honor NFT history, or just have a laugh. This is how Checks and its derivatives have brought Web3 together, through the lens of the artists and collectors who have put their spin on the original.
Seedphrase, Chromie Squiggles and more
There are literally too many Checks VV derivatives to list here, but a few have recently caught the attention of the Web3 community. First is Chromie Squiggles by venture-punk.eth. In honor of Art Blocks creator Erick Calderon and the platform’s iconic Chromie Squiggles collection, venture-punk.eth put together an instant classic of Checks VV featuring his interpretation of the project. Likewise, the iconic Seedphrase collector, Lana Denina, and young and sick they have interpreted all Checks in their own unique ways.
Pepe’s Checks by VincentVanDough
Check derivatives are even inspiring derivatives of their own. On February 4th, pseudonymous NFT collector and thought leader VincentVanDough dropped his pepe checks open edition. Priced at $6.90 a piece and available for 24 hours, a total of 237,869 issues were minted, earning VanDough $1,641,296 new, more than three times the amount Butcher’s Checks fetched with initial minting and creator royalties. .
illustrator oxdgb he quickly followed in VVD’s footsteps with his own version of Pepe Checks composed of the artist’s distinctive security camera aesthetic. However, fans of the image will not be able to coin the derivative of that derivative; Oxdgb did this “just for fun”.
Beeple was next to get in on the Pepe Checks action, putting his signature touch on the VincentVanDoughs derivative. Let’s just say the artwork caught the attention of both of you. Butcher and vincentvandough. If Beeple is inspired by something he’s created, he knows he’s really made an impact in the NFT space.
Verifications in the history of art
The influence of checks is not limited to the present. The project has gone back in time to touch on some of the best-known works in art history. Gillesdc put his touch on several of these pieces, including Salvador Dalí’s “The Persistence of Memory” and Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam.” The artist has done the same with several other works of art, such as that of René Magritte “the son of man” and “The betrayal of images.”
Humanity Checks helps those in need
Butcher isn’t just using the popularity of the Checks VV project to stimulate collaborative creative thinking in Web3; he is also using it to help people in need. On February 6, Butcher took to Twitter to announce the open-edition mint of Humanity Check to help victims of the recent earthquake in turkeythat has left thousands dead and entire blocks devastated.
The popularity of Checks has also done a lot to bring another of Butcher’s help-related open releases back into the spotlight. In November 2022, Butcher launched the 100 meals YOU, and each NFT minted represents a donation of 100 meals to Feed America’s national network of food banks. Several members of the NFT community have directed the attention of Web3 to mint in recent days and weeks, helping to increase the number of mints to 20,896, which translates to more than two million meals.
The coming together and collaboration between ecosystems that Jack Butcher has catalyzed is something that the Web3 space should appreciate and celebrate. Community is perhaps the most overused buzzword in the crypto sphere, but like all good clichés, it exists for a good reason. Checks VV is precisely the project the blockchain was created for, and is one of, if not the first, to inspire such a high level of solidarity and goodwill throughout the NFT community.
