NFT Royalties Are Dead, Long Live the Meme! Jack Butcher's Revolution Explained

Royalties are dead. But whatever dinosaur egg that it hatched from — let’s get that out of the way.

Before you sharpen your pitchforks and gather your torches, know that this isn’t an effort to put creators to death. It's about freeing them. And the guy at the head of this charge, intentionally or not, is Jack Butcher.

Who is Jack Butcher anyway?

You probably know him as the creator of Visualize Value, his minimalist design empire. Perhaps you noticed his name recently appear next to Naval Ravikant. Or, maybe you’re one of the thousands who aped into Checks or Opepen.

Butcher is not just a designer to me. He’s truly a cultural architect. He gets the internet, and he gets its language—mostly because he speaks it, too. And that language? It's memes.

Having started his career in the trenches, Bruce designed for agencies. What he found out almost immediately was the internet’s amazing power to go straight to the audience. His early crypto work, despite his initial skepticism of NFTs, set the stage for his subsequent experiments. He wasn’t just creating cool-looking artwork, he was testing the limits of what digital ownership could look like.

This was a sales transaction—not simply an artful sale, the sale of his “NFTs, Explained” for 74 ETH sent a message. It was a validation of his design philosophy: simplify, clarify, and make the artwork the product.

Royalties: A Crutch, Not a Ladder?

Indeed, Butcher’s contrarian put-down of royalties is where things get juicy, and where the true meme potential goes nuclear. He’s quite critical of them, viewing them as a possible bait and switch, a “getting paid on churn” construct that can kill creativity.

Think about it. Royalties create a dependency. An artist might become more focused on maintaining the value of their existing work rather than pushing boundaries and creating something new. It’s similar to a musical act that refuses to create new songs and just replays their catalog of greatest hits.

And the artists who should be receiving royalties the most are typically missing out, he contends. The power law continues to rule, leaving most creators duking it out for the remaining crumbs.

Instead, Butcher pushes for transparent pricing and a dogged pursuit of any new value created. Charge a fair rate for your work, communicate with your audience, and continue to grow. It’s a marathon, not a sprint to a quick flip.

It’s a savage, sincere, and absolutely meme-able method. It's the kind of thinking that resonates with a generation that's grown up on internet hustle and DIY ethos.

• Transparency: Openness builds trust and resilience.
• Immediacy: Get your work out there and see what sticks.
• Creation: Focus on making new things, not just milking old ones.

Checks and Opepen aren’t simply NFT projects, they’re social experiments. They're memes manifested on the blockchain.

Checks, Opepen, and the Meme-ification of Art

Checks, having seen the new Twitter business model of verification as pay to play, ridiculed the centralized authority and associated legitimacy even further. It asked a simple question: What does it really mean to be verified in the digital age?

With its generative minimalism and opt-in reveal process, Opepen captured the youthful, playful, experimental energy of the NFT community. It was the first big collaborative art project on the blockchain, a digital “Pepe” for the art-savvy collector.

These projects weren’t only about building wealth (though they absolutely did). They were speculative, bordering on poetic, explorations of what might be possible through digital identity, decentralization, and community-driven art. They were about building a culture.

Butcher knows that in the good, bad, and ugly of today’s internet age that culture is now currency. And memes are the most effective culture-value-spreading medium out there.

So, what does all this mean for the future of NFTs. It signals that the previous paradigms are breaking down. The emphasis now is on moving away from scarcity and speculation to community, creativity and cultural relevance.

Royalties may be dead, but art sure isn’t. At the center of that meme-powered revolution, like it or not, is Jack Butcher. So, embrace the chaos, build something new, and remember: the internet is watching. And the internet loves a good meme.

So, what does all this mean for the future of NFTs? It means that the old models are crumbling. The focus is shifting from scarcity and speculation to community, creativity, and cultural relevance.

Royalties might be dead, but art is not. And Jack Butcher, whether he likes it or not, is leading the meme-powered revolution. So, embrace the chaos, build something new, and remember: the internet is watching. And the internet loves a good meme.