Introducing Basic Buns NFT
Basic Buns is an on-chain art project inspired by the “Change What The Bunny Is Holding” text meme. A great example is this:
Basic Buns is my second NFT contract. My first project, Emoji Gardens, had some unforeseen issues that are to be expected with any new project. Basic Buns is a much improved contract; more efficient on gas and with more features.
The Contract
You can view the full source code for Basic Buns on Etherscan at 0x6f13d82d5d501b2eebb94a34bbf8bfdf20440079. The contract is published under an MIT License, meaning you can use it as a basis for your own projects. It uses the ERC721 standard without the optional ERC721Enumerable so it is very gas-efficient, meaning it is cheaper to mint and transfer tokens than what is typical for most NFT contracts.
This contract has a lot of features that can be useful for other projects:
- It has an interface to the Emoji Gardens contract to allow Emoji Gardens holders to claim Basic Buns for free
- It has functions for returning the Basic Buns artwork as plain text, as SVG and as base64 encoded tokenURI
- It has full traits which are also returned with tokenURI
- It has functions for minting and claiming single or multi supply
- It has functions for the owner of the contract to change price or lower supply at any time
You can observe the data being return in plain text with the “bunnyString” method:
Read operations like this are gas-free, so you can use the contract as an API to extract data and build upon. You could, for example, build a game that utilizes the traits data returned in tokenURI, or create generative art that incorporates the buns (and is free to claim for bun holders).
Basic Bun Rarity
If you read the Basic Buns contract, you will find various components that make up each bun: ears, face, body, emoji held, background gradient and background pattern. Some components are equally rated in terms of rarity while others have tiers. These components also make up the traits and names of each bun. Essentially, there are a few faces that are really rare, like ｡•́‿•̀, and then some that are semi-rare. Then, there’s cat ears /\_/\ which are more rare than the two types of bunny ears, and the body can have one of three types.
These traits will determine whether you get a bunny, kitty or human. Humans are very rare since there is a single face type that determines if you get a human, and then the name of the creature is just “Human.” Otherwise, the ears will determine if you get a “Kitty” or “Bunny” and the face will determine the expression, so the name will be “Smug Kitty” or “Timid Bunny.” You can view the traits for any Bun in the properties box on OpenSea, including the Emoji held which is represented as the Emoji itself:
The main differentiator in rarity is the creature type, and at the time of this writing, out of 129 Buns minted so far, there are only 2 Humans and 18 Kitties. There is also one type of face that has not been uncovered yet!
You may also notice that because Basic Buns uses native Emoji in the SVG, this Emoji will look different depending on the platform.
Claiming vs Minting
It was always my intention that Emoji Garden would be a genesis project and holders would be able to mint more NFTs for free simply by holding gardens. Basic Buns is a culmination of that idea. At the time of deploying the Basic Buns contract, there were 416 Emoji Gardens minted. Thus, the first 416 buns can be claimed for free by anyone holding an Emoji Garden (they just have to pay the gas fee). Beyond that, there are 584 Buns that can be minted for a cost of 0.025 ETH each (plus gas).
To facilitate claims, the Basic Buns minting website checks if the connected account holds any Emoji Gardens and will pre-fill a claim form with the IDs of those gardens, like so:
The contract tracks the public sale supply separately from the reserved supply to facilitate both simultaneously. Furthermore, while the max supply is set to 1k by default, if at any time the supply is reduced, it does not affect how minting and claiming work, it only means that there will be a race between whether or not the total supply is acquired by claims vs public mints. Meaning, if I reduce the total supply to 600, and the remaining supply is acquired by public mints (paying 0.025 ETH per mint), then Emoji Garden holders will no longer be able to claim buns for free. At the time of this writing there are no plans to reduce the supply, but it is an option to be considered.
The Road Ahead
Because the Basic Buns contract is more efficient and more elegant than Emoji Gardens, and because I can reduce the supply and end the mint at any time, going forward Basic Buns will be the main contract used for future projects on the roadmap. This means that if and when another contract is deployed, the plan is to have supply reserved for Basic Buns holders to claim. Emoji Gardens will not have any future claims beyond Basic Buns. In light of this, the cost to mint Emoji Gardens has been reduced to zero, it is free to mint more. However, any gardens after ID 416 cannot be used to claim Basic Buns. Interestingly enough, it is possible to buy an Emoji Garden that has not been used to claim a Bun for less than 0.025 ETH and then use it to claim a Bun for free. You can check whether or not a Garden has been used to claim a Bun here.
Also, because I now have an NFT contract with a low supply and code that supports claim mints (both in-contract and for a minting website), I will be able to support derivative minting projects. This is one ideal way to add value for Bun holders and also help support other artists launching projects on Ethereum or Polygon. I already have some ideas in mind but am also open to working with other artists. If you are an artist or developer planning to launch an NFT project and you are interested in this, please keep an eye out for more details to be shared soon.
Besides this, there are other benefits planned for Basic Buns holders:
- Giveaways including at various milestones for the mint (200, 400, etc)
- A private Discord + DAO for Bun holders
- More TBD depending on community interest
For now my best advice is to mint Basic Buns! You can mint at the official website: https://bunny.millyverse.xyz/ and then check the collection on OpenSea: https://opensea.io/collection/basic-buns
And remember: hold onto your Buns!
