Introduction to Mutant Monsters
A Crypto Collectible Series by a Serendipity
This is the first article in a series around Mutant Monsters, ERC721 ecosystem, and digital collectibles — so let’s call this “Introduction to Mutant Monsters.”
Mutant Monsters series started as a learning and development project. I needed visuals to test and develop my ideas for a crypto collectible series featuring some original artwork. I was about to close down my mutant based development work in Rinkeby testnet and to move forward with the next step. However, at some point, I realized that my mutant tokens become visually quite appealing, and I decided to publish the project in the Mainnet and make it available in crypto collectible marketplaces such as OpenSea, RareBits, and SpiderDEX — a strong player in Asian markets.
To my surprise, the series jumped from intial Dapp rank of ~#1800 directly to #777, then soon in Top #200. Now, after two weeks in the Mainnet, Mutants have been lingering around #150 in Dapp popularity (peaking at #119), occasionally surpassing many long-term pioneers and corporate projects like RareBits and Enjin Coin.
In OpenSea rankings, Mutans have been floating around #40 quite consitently.
The serendipity? There was a split-second decision to push the project out in the Mainnet instead of archiving it for good.
The Mutant Token
For an user, the main feature is the token itself: the visual, description, and features that can be used some time and someplace in the future. (Did I already mention that Mutants can travel sovereignly across time, space, and universes?) All visible features of a Mutant Monster are created based a random hash that is drawn from tokens’ underlying attributes, mainly from the name, message, and tokenID. That guarantees the uniqueness of each token. The image is generated using various open-source libraries.
The primary and most visual element is, of course, the mutants themselves — Lovingly provided by Robohash.org.
While developing the platform, I needed random images and found them from Robohash. I found that Set 2 has been seriously an underrated one. The characters are goofy and, thus, in my taste. As soon as I realized that these chaps are mutant monsters rather than robots (c.f. Set 1), I focused my development efforts around those fellows. That was a right call, as the community jumped on the mutant train as soon as it start moving. The original author of the series is Hrvoje Novakovic; we found your masterpiece — thank you!
If you are a newcomer to ERC721 and Crypto collectibles, you should now read some foundational articles (see the links below) before continuing with this one. Start with The Anatomy of ERC721 and Solidity and ERC721 — and it is easy to find many more.
Mutants on L2 Sidechain
Back in 2017, when I first learned about blockchain and Ethereum, I got an idea to use a private Ethereum chain — a Level 2 Sidechain — for heavy and GAS-intensive computing. I figured that it should be possible to create an initial ERC721 token on the sidechain (compute for feature creation), and then migrate that asset into Mainnet for storing the value and managing ownership. The main drivers were increasing speed and getting the cost down while maintaining compatibility.
After serious analysis and investigation — including numerous test builds — I decided to deploy and develop on Quorum-EMV platform. Quorum is 100% EMV compliant and has an active development community that provides deployment-ready building blocks for setting up and managing a private Quorum-EMV blockchain. In addition to that, Quorum has advanced privacy features that may become useful in the future. A Proof-of-Authority chain with RAFT consensus algorithm was a perfect solution for my need. The chain creates blocks on demand — no empty blocks if no traffic — and GAS is free. Almost forgot the main feature! (GAS = ETH needed used for processing, a core feature of an Ethereum blockchain.)
The sidechain was named 0xBitchain as a reference to 0xBitcoin; 0xBitcoin community was instrumental for development and testing these ideas.
Trivia: The public monitor node of 0xBitchain was named “Toaster” after InfernalToast, the original developer of 0xBitcoin token and EIP918 standard for mineable ERC20 tokens.
During development stages, an analysis showed that GAS efficiency is at least +50% using the sidechain method, and it gets even higher — up to 80% — with more features included and data saved in the token. Another main benefit is the speed of processing: one can create hundreds of complex tokens in a minute, contrasted with typical time to mint one simple ERC721 token in Mainnet.
An Interoperable ERC721 Contract
My initial business need was to create a standards-compliant token that enables publishing a digital asset with limited variable number of instances. ERC721 standard seemed to be a perfect foundation for that. The original context for my need is the classic production of art prints, such as etchings, lithography, or serigraphy. One can easily find parallels at various more contemporary domains involving digital rights or proofs of authenticity, for real-world or fully digital assets.
An option to pre-mint characters and their features inside the contract without minting tokens was something to pursue. In the final Mainnet deployment, 2,500 (out of 10,000 projected) characters was pre-created — but no tokens was minted at that time. The maximum supply of tokens was set to 1,000,000 (‘max_supply’) in both the sidechain and the Mainnet. Randomizer ratio was set to “50:50” and “100.” This setting means that half (50%) of the characters have a hard cap of 10–100 tokens in the series of that type— they will be “rare” ones.
The selection for rarity takes place randomly, of course, and that feature is programmed inside the contract. That is one example of a GAS-intensive task pointing to benefits of using a sidechain. The remaining 50% of characters have cap of 1,000,000, the maximum supply of the contract itself. Rarity attribute for them is “Unlimited.” In practice, the contracts stops minting more tokens of any sort when the total max cap of one million is reached. For rare ones the contract checks if the hard cap for the character has reached. Once hard cap for a character is set, it can not be changed. All these features are hard-coded and thus can’t be changed by managers or the contract owner.
Minting and Buying
If you read this far, you may be curious how to get some Mutant Monsters for yourself!
In the beginning, some tokens were minted and put on sale in three marketplaces. With some GAS reserve in tank and some more coming from the market, a Mutant Thanks-giveaway during Canadian Thanksgiving season was carried out. Another one, Monster Mash was thrown during Halloween season.
With some additional minting rounds, the first 200 Mutants was escorted into public from the dungeons of 0xbitchain. Most of them were Alphas — number 1 of their breed, out of 2500 potential characters. During that period, based on feedback and discussions with early adopters, new properties (attributes) were added and made available in metadata feed — see the picture.
Business Continuity
The critical business continuity question is what happens if the original provider goes out of business or disappears? In this case the most vulnerable elements are L2 Sidechain (=0xBitchain) and API endpoint maintained and managed by a consortium and the token developer.
Now the good news: OpenSea captures and preserves token’s image and metadata retrieved from tokenURI, so as soon as the token is visible in OpenSea, the primary API service or the sidechain is not critical for the sustenance of the token. Token will be preserved by Ethereum blockchain, and metadata will be provided by the marketplace, even if the original creator goes out of business.
Moreover, the tokenURI can be updated by the contract owner with one simple transaction, so in the future the metadata can be provided by a free service such as AWS or Postman, or read from an IPFS endpoint — for example.
Next articles in the series will answer to questions like “Ok, I am interested. How exactly it can be used?” and “How Mutants are made.”
Links:
Muntant Monsters’ Discord Server
Special thanks to 0xBitcoin community for an ongoing moral support, OpenSea team for excellent platform and developer support, 0x Project for their contribution, and Digital Ocean’s Hatch program that expedited this project greatly.
