NFTs, Generative NFTs, Rarity

A Practical Reason Why Generative NFT Hierarchy / Rarity Really Comes in Handy

Trait distribution has a practical side.

Photo by Sneaky Elbow on Unsplash. Ha, looks like these three pugs all have the same traits. If they were NFTs, we’d have to guess which one’s more rare? lol. :-)

Just when I think I’ve written every possible thought one could have about generative NFT rarity tables (e.g., here or here), I had yet another thought, which came about after someone in client meeting asked an interesting question. The question was simply: What if you wanted to offer something special to certain holders. How could you do that? How could you decide who could get that special benefit?

What jumped out immediately to me was to leverage traits. For example, imagine you have a generative cat NFT with various traits like different backgrounds, fur colors, shirts, bracelets, and hats.

Now, without a well-defined rarity table — one that includes a hierarchy of rarity (meaning, for example, that some backgrounds are rarer than others, some fur colors are rarer that others, some shirts rarer that others, etc.) — you’d still be able to generate 10,000 unique cats, but you wouldn’t have much of a hierarchy. In other words, you’d have a flat distribution in which, for any given trait, there would be a similar number of holders.

That might look and function okay, but you’d be losing out on a few neat things.