On September 9th, 2016 at 01:46:42 (UTC), history was made.
Verifiable on the blockchain, the first Rare Pepe, in digital form, with an integrated, transferable, immutable certificate of authenticity, was created.
The significance of this project to the birth of cryptoart cannot be overstated.
This unique and innovative project largely defined the concept of tokenized cryptoart as we understand it today and is credited with spawning the global cryptoart movement.
Going beyond the early individual experimental work that had tokenized artwork on Namecoin, the Rare Pepe project engaged and captured the imagination of a community of artists, enthusiasts and collectors around the world.
Also, as distinct from Spells of Genesis and other emerging projects, Rare Pepe was the first to demonstrate the use of blockchain for a community of enthusiasts to create, own and trade art simply as ‘art’ (ie. not assets for gaming use or any broader utility).
The Rare Pepe Blockchain Project began on September 13th 2016, with the uploading of the art asset RAREPEPE to the Rare Pepe Directory.
While there were no leaders in the Rare Pepe Blockchain Project, Mike was the sole scientist for the first 1,000 cards, the directory even stopped for a short period after reaching 1k as he was a bit overwhelmed, then the other 774 were included once more scientists helped.
Rare Pepes became a collectible phenomenon in 2016, when Joe Looney established the RarePepeWallet, a digital marketplace for buying and selling the cards.
These cards aren’t alt-right memes, and they have nothing to do with the original creator of Pepe the frog, Matt Furie. Rather, they were designed by a number of people, and they represent all kinds of different pop culture and artistic symbols.
There’s a card featuring a Julian Assange Pepe, called PEPEASSANGE (100 of them exist), a Salvador Dali Pepe - DALIPEPE , and even a card for the Winklevoss twins - WINKELPEPE (their green heads sit atop the bodies of the twins from “The Shining” — only one of this card exists).