The Extraordinary Crystal is an NFT with a unique mechanism, which prompts questions about the relationship between creator and collector.
The Extraordinary Crystal is a collaboration between ktrby & makeitrad.
To read about the development and tech stack of this project, skip ahead to Development & Tech Stack.
Learn more about the collection on the website, or view the collection at https://opensea.io/collection/extraordinary-crystal
Context
$ASH is an ERC-20 token created by Pak, a legendary and anonymous NFT artist. Pak is among the highest grossing NFT creators.
Fans of Pak quickly formed communities surrounding the $ASH token; speculating on it’s utilities, price action, and future. As these communities grew, they largely became social communities as well as spaces for speculating and sharing investment advice.
I (screen name: ktrby), at the time of The Extraordinary Crystal’s release, had already released a few projects which catered to $ASH communities.
makeitrad is a prominent NFT creator whose collections usually feature AI-generated artworks. After makeitrad made it clear that he was hoping to gain exposure to the $ASH market by targeting $ASH communities with an NFT collection, our collaboration began.
The creator of $ASH, Pak, is known for experimenting with smart contract mechanics to create unique collector experiences. $ASH fans are receptive to this, and this has been reflected in the various NFT projects which targeted these communities. makeitrad and I both agreed that we wanted to implement a novel mechanism for our project.
Narrative
The AI-generated artwork created by makeitrad features beautiful, shape-shifting crystals.
The Extraordinary Crystal, the most special crystal of all, is locked to the owner’s wallet after they win it at auction. If they try to transfer it, a new token will instead be minted to the recipient — one of 6 different “Ordinary Crystals”.
In this way, the owner of the extraordinary crystal can shape the collection — they may choose scarcity, or abundance. They may let the extraordinary crystal remain a 1/1 piece, or they may choose to create a collection of 10,000 crystals!
We also prompted discussion of the relationship between creator and collector with this mechanism — by winning the auction and taking control of the whole collection, the collector in a sense becomes the creator.
Sale & Reception
The auction for the Extraordinary Crystal took place during late April of 2022, received bids from 7+ bidders, and concluded with a 331 $ASH bid (~$1200 USD at the time). Donye NFT, an NFT creator and community member, won the auction and was transferred the NFT.
We found community members discussing the possible futures for the Extraordinary Crystal collection on Discord and Twitter. After the auction concluded, Donye publicly mentioned that he had plans for the NFT.
Development & Tech Stack
The smart contract for The Extraordinary Crystal was developed using Solidity and Remix IDE. You can view the smart contract on Etherscan here.
The mechanism is achieved using a custom transfer hook. The first transfer of the main token is treated as a regular transfer operation (the token must be delivered to the auction winner), but all further transfers actually perform mint operations instead, keeping the main token in the sender’s wallet.
The smart contract is short and sweet, at only 106 lines in length. The efficiency of the smart contract led to an inexpensive deployment, and gas efficient transactions for users.
At the time of writing, there are more than 100 crystals in the collection, and there have been 0 reported issues.
Donye & ‘The Frame Games’
Donye NFT is an active $ASH community member, who frequently leads social initiatives among $ASH fans. Many came to know Donye after his #IWasFramed campaign, during which many users added a blue circle frame to their profile picture on Twitter or Discord.
Donye won the auction with his bid of 331 $ASH, and made it clear that he had plans to utilise the NFT for his own projects. The result of Donye’s plans was ‘The Frame Games’.
The Frame Games included a series of online, scavenger-hunt-like events, from which users could win crystals as a prize. Donye’s Frame Games initiative maintained a lot of social interaction among core community members, and continued to hold events for several months after the release of the Extraordinary Crystal.
As for the question of whether the auction winner would choose scarcity or abundance — Donye soon started minting crystals to close friends, as well as myself and makeitrad. Today, there are >100 crystals in the collection.
Both I and makeitrad have expressed that we’re glad to see the novel NFT mechanism being used in such a creative and engaging way. Personally, I love to see something that I’ve created be used so positively. I think Donye, makeitrad, myself, and all of the participants in The Frame Games would agree that this project has brought people closer together, despite living all across the world.
