Criti Cats NFT: The First Ever Crowd-Ranked NFT Collection

8 min readJun 6, 2022

Criti Cats is the world’s first NFT collection to invent and employ Parasocial Rarity (Parararity); an analogue method of creating and ranking collectible NFTs. Unlike traditional, algorithmically generated NFT collections, each item is hand-drawn individually, and in the process, an analogue system of rarity is intuitively generated. All items are revealed at the outset, and the order of initial buying from criti.eth (hereafter referred to as minting) is designated as an immutable ranking of value. The earlier an item is minted compared to others in the collection, the higher the Parararity rank it is awarded with. Early minters will claim what they perceive to be the most valuable items first, and the continuously more confined choice this imposes on later minters creates scarcity in the highest-quality items. The name ‘Parasocial Rarity’ is derived from the psychological concept of Parasocial Interaction, where an indivisible community, ‘the crowd’, interacts with an eponymous individual. Here, this takes the form of minters engaging in a parasocial relationship with Criti Cats; 10,000 items, available to buy on Opensea at the starting price of 0.003 ETH each.

The genesis Parararity ranking that Criti Cats constructs will demonstrate, for perhaps the first time, how people conceive of collectible NFT rarity in the absence of a concrete statistical aid. Traditionally, exact proportions of trait quantities are used to algorithmically generate accessorised items, which are subsequently ranked by rarity calculations. In contrast, the ‘machinery’ which creates provable scarcity in Parararity is the exposition of an artist’s intuition to a hivemind of human taste. Through their minting, people can ‘vote’ on the item styles which they perceive to be most valuable, so not only are the best items overwhelmingly likely to appear at the top of the Parararity ranking, but the NFT community gets to express their own tastes in determining the exact standings. One person cannot determine the exact value of each item with empirical precision, but a collective of up to 10,000 people possesses a tangibly relevant wisdom.

In Criti Cats, a loosely consistent cat mascot is repeated through 10,000 hand-drawings. It is essentially impossible to draw two identical items free hand, so just like traditional NFT collectibles, all items are cohesive yet non-fungible. If the way I had drawn a feature struck me as aesthetically pleasing, that style was likely to be repeated. This repetition is not detrimental to the effective generation of rare traits as it would be usually, because it represents a method of successive approximation, or practice, through which increasingly high-quality items are produced. In terms of which traits were good enough to repeat, the standard rose continually, so there is far more variation between items than there would traditionally be. Through this feature of Parararity, Criti Cats evolves over the course of 10,000 iterations, from a rudimentary doodle into nuanced illustrations. The final and most practiced items that I drew are noticeably more attractive than those at the start.

Each item therefore achieves a ranking in what I have termed ‘Seniority’. As a general rule, the higher the Seniority rank, the more valuable an item is likely to be. The items are numbered in the reverse chronological order in which I drew them, so the Seniority rank value is directly proportional to the token identifier, or issue number, of the item. Criti Cat #1 is #1 in Seniority, having been the last and most practiced Criti Cat I drew. As usual, the role of the NFT collector is to secure the most valuable items before anyone else does. Minters are unlikely to have time to scour 10,000 items in detail, so their best approach is to prioritize the assessment of items ranked highest in Seniority when choosing which to mint. To do this, Sort by Oldest on the official Criti Cats NFT wallet. Acting as a provisional guide to the most valuable items, Seniority will inform minters’ decisions, in a similar way to how one would consult traditional rarity rankings. Unlike traditional rarity however, which can be subject to change based on the type of calculation employed by the rarity ranking provider, Parararity is an immutable record. The minting process permanently inscribes the mint order into the blockchain, and as such, the official Parararity ranking. This information will be subsequently collected and hosted in an accessible format.

Each Criti Cat is technically a unique 1/1, but if an innovative item created by abstract experimentation has few other parallels throughout the collection, and stands out from all the others, it can reliably be perceived as rare. Seniority is a good general directive here, because the incidence of rare and aesthetically pleasing items increases steadily through each iteration. There is a greater number of rare items towards the end of the collection, because as I progressed, I developed more traits to combine into expressive and unique items. Still, I have termed this metric Seniority, rather than simply ‘Value’, because there is no guarantee that just because an item succeeds more practice that it will necessarily be more rare, quirky, or aesthetically pleasing; there is no guarantee that the value of an item maps directly onto its Seniority level. Overall, minters will infer a more familiar feeling from the more common items, while the rarest will transcend those adjacent to it. It is the minter’s job to intuitively select the most polished and rare looking items, claiming them before anyone else does.

This new system does not rely on the community’s virtuosity, because a cogent Parararity ranking is a by-product of incentivised minters executing the most profitable collection strategy, outlined in this paragraph. Again, minters should start with un-minted items highest in Seniority when identifying and minting those most striking and eye-catching. Paying attention to Seniority and perceived rarity simultaneously will present early minters with the most valuable items in the collection. Ignoring this strategy is likely to impede a minter’s ability to sell their item for a profit. Even so, minters looking for an alternative strategy, or simply exercising their indisputable right to engineer the Parararity ranking in the way they see fit, may consider ignoring Seniority in search of low Seniority or ‘vintage’ Criti Cats which have quirky traits, styles, or significances. While these ‘Junior’ items are not as practiced, some will be of great inherent value. Minters have an incentive to mint every item, regardless of Seniority and despite imperfection, not only because the unclaimed will remain 0.003 ETH. Owning one Criti Cat grants early access to my future Parararity collections, increasing one’s chances of securing a high ranking Parararity product in my upcoming launches.

A question arises: what makes a Criti Cat stand out from the others? Subjective though it is, attempts to provide some provisional clues are made here. For instance, the overwhelming majority of Criti Cats have just one head, so those with two heads can technically be seen as rare. This quantifiable example is used to present a simple explanation; in reality the metrics for determining rarity in more aesthetic senses are innumerable and overlapping. More detailed Criti Cats could, for example, be seen as more valuable, because more time has been spent on them, and they therefore contain a greater amount of information. Data driven collectors may automate this kind of assessment by looking at the file size of each, to determine how much ‘ink’ was used in the image. On the other hand, simpler Criti Cats could be seen as equally valuable, if not more, because they have potentially compelling character in their striking confidence. These understated Criti Cats, afforded less time in their creation, are illuminated by their unlikely success.

Another metric could be orderliness; some minters may favour the more tidy, orderly Criti Cats, while some will favour those that are more chaotic and abstract. This metric demonstrates the idiosyncrasy involved in assessing Parararitized NFTs. Rather than possessions, the traits of Criti Cats lie in the personality that their individual expressions imbue them with. The varying character of each Criti Cat will ultimately map onto the temperaments of their minter. In any case, when faced with actual examples, minters will be able to make qualitative distinctions instinctively, ultimately choosing one over another. They may not be able to articulate in exact terms how they made their choice, but that is the nature of art, which straddles the boundary between the known and the unknown.

Parararity also departs from the traditional format of minting hidden items; integral to the generation of a Parararity ranking is the informed choice of the minters on what they value most. The upside to the traditional format of mint and reveal is the random chance of winning the rarer items in the collection, but research into Opensea’s metadata reveals that NFTs minted before reveal generate a profit upon resale just 28.5% of the time, while profit is generated 65.1% of the time by NFTs purchased and sold on within a secondary market.[1] The implication here is that it is more profitable to be able to see exactly what you’re buying. Departing from the lottery of the reveal concept, Parararity offers a fairer alternative to consumers: the opportunity to mint the most valuable items is awarded to the earliest collectors of the product.

Rather than letting computers snatch the opportunity away from us, Parararity encourages people to spend more time looking at art. While it is a privilege to experience algorithmically generated art, the results of which can be mesmerising, the future of collectible NFT valuation does not have to be entirely statistical. Parararity can coexist with traditional NFT generation as an alternative to algorithmic dictation of value. This new, maths-less concept affords greater empowerment to artists interested in collectible NFT creation, but not as interested in mathematics. Anyone is free to use my Parararity concept to make NFT collections, and I am honoured to contribute to the new and exciting plane of artistic invention that the NFT space represents. What I ask in return is that you credit me with this invention, use its correct name, and champion Criti Cats as the first to devise and employ it. If you do decide to create a Parararity NFT collection, notify me, and I will promote it on the official Parararity social media accounts; together we can build a completely novel NFT ecosystem.

Art attempts to articulate the unknown, and Parararity, in igniting the conversation of criticism, provides future NFT collections with a way to reclaim the true subjectivity of authentic art. As to the minters of Criti Cats, choose wisely… or don’t. With Parararity, you arrange the podium.