The XENFTs launch on different chains was a major success, engaging many XEN community members in trying to mint the most rare Xunicorns. Their collectible appeal comes from their scarcity, and it’s thought that they will gain in value as XEN expands its activities and gains utility. Here we describe the most rare XENFTs as rated by the OpenSea marketplace, and we try to understand the reasons behind their rarity.
Why do we collect things
Did you play a collectible game as a kid? Do you remember your baseball cards, video games, Pokemon, or stickers? Did you ever take the time to trade something with your friends for other items that were missing from your collection? Perhaps you weren’t trading but simply collecting stickers to attach them to the fridge for the sole pleasure of always getting new and unique pieces. A collector is not just a buyer, and often something other than speculation drives his motives behind the purchase of a particular item, and the price follows suit. The urge to possess things can drive the price very high. We have seen that with Xunicorns, whose mint price reached something like $40K at launch.
Why do people collect NFTs
One of the primary reasons people collect NFTs is for investment purposes. NFTs have gained a reputation as a new form of digital gold, with some NFTs selling for millions of dollars. The idea is that collectors can buy NFTs early on, hold onto them for a few years, and then sell them for a profit once their value has appreciated. This speculative aspect of NFT collecting has attracted many investors and speculators to the market.
Another reason why people collect NFTs is for the sense of ownership and exclusivity that comes with owning a unique digital asset. NFTs are one-of-a-kind, meaning that the collector who owns the NFT is the only one who can claim ownership of that specific digital asset. This exclusivity can be a powerful motivator for collectors who want to own something that is truly unique and cannot be replicated or duplicated.
In addition to exclusivity, collecting NFTs can also be a way to participate in communities. There’s no ad hoc XENFT community yet but it’s possible that someone will create the Apex club or similar.
What are XENFTs
We already wrote extensively about XENFTs and their purpose. You can read the litepaper and the articles below:
The XENFT and XEN Torrent Protocol Litepaper to Upgrade XEN Crypto
XENFT launch to burn XEN Crypto supply
XENFT and XEN Torrent audit report
In short, there are 3 categories of XENFTs: Apex, Limited, Collector. All work as batch minters, where you can mint XEN Crypto with multiple virtual accounts (VMUs). The main difference between Collectors and the other two categories is that you need to burn XEN to mint an Apex or Limited. Apex are limited in quantity and Limited are available just for one year since launch. Collector is a straight batch minter with some collectible value.
To get the scarcest Apex, there had to be a burn of 10 billion XEN on Ethereum. The second-highest burner is Epic, with 5 billion XEN burn. Limited category requires 250 million XEN burn. The rarity, however, isn’t straightforward. While for many Xunicorns will always be the most desirable, for those looking at the OpenSea marketplace, it may be something else.
XENFTs on OpenSea
The XENFTs collection on the OpenSea marketplace counts 18.3K pieces so far. They can be sorted in different ways.
Someone who just wants to buy a XENFT with the most XEN will apply filters like the highest AMP, 128 VMUs, and Collector category, and this will give a list of Xenturions. Where price isn’t shown, an offer with an own purchase price can easily be made.
There are other attributes like AMP, Category, Class, EAA, Maturity date time, Maturity month, Maturity year, Term, VMUs, XEN burned, cRank helping with refining the search.
While all XENFTs are unique, some are more rare, like, for example, the Xunicorns, which are limited to 100 per chain. There can be an unlimited number of Collector XENFTs or a huge number of Limited XENFTs, but the Xunicorns are also special because of the huge burn.
The rarirty score
To help users find the most rare NFTs, OpenSea applies a specific rarity score to each XENFT. This is how it works:
“We use “rarity” ranking to describe the relative scarcity of one NFT’s attributes compared to another in the same collection. An NFT with rare attributes will have a lower rarity ranking (such as 1 or 2) than an NFT that shares attributes with thousands of others in the collection.”
They also say that the metadata of the NFTs can change because most of the NFTs are stored off chain, but this isn’t true for XENFTs, which are stored permanently on chain. The only thing that changes is the “redeemed” stamp, which is applied after someone redeems the XEN tokens at maturity.
The most rare XENFTs
Sorting XENFTs by Apex Category, Xunicorn Class, and Most Rare gives us a list on top of which can be found 5 Xunicorns with more than the required 10 billion XEN burn. This one difference places them above all others, despite the fact that their cRank is more recent than the oldest Xunicorns. Three of these have the same number sequence, which features 1337. This is a mark left by one person, or rather, a team considering themselves an elite.
The most rare Xunicorns, according to OpenSea, are the XEN torrents #83 and #91, with a rarity rank of 7.
It’s interesting to see that between the second and third most rare XENFTs, the number of burned XEN was what gave the #91 a higher rank, despite the fact that the #56 will have more XEN at maturity.
All other Xunicorns have a regular 10 billion burn; however, it’s curious that OpenSea lists the oldest Xunicorns in last place when searched by Most Rare.
Xunicorn #1 has the highest AMP and EAA and was minted first, so it may be possible that the ranking algorithm is wrong, as it gave it a rank score of 14,699 out of a total of 18,340 XENFTs. The algo seems to mistakenly believe that the 0% EAA is more rare than the 3%. There doesn’t need to be any algo to know that the first item created is usually a special one. Add to this a trained eye of a collector and the knowledge of what XENFTs are, and it will be clear that #1 should be at the top.
According to OpenSea, the most rare Apex is an Epic with 1,000,000,007 XEN burned. Another Epic with 1,111,111,111 XEN burned, 111 VMUs and 1% EAA is definitely a unique item to add to the collection. Rare and Exotic also made it to the top.
Things start to get interesting when we stop filtering by categories and classes and look for the most rare XENFTs of them all. We can now see that not only Apexes, but also Limited and Collector XENFTs, are at the top of the list. And it’s a surprise to see Limited XENFT #25156 as the most rare of all the XENFTs. So how did it get there?
It would seem like the Limited #25156 got to the top because it burned a lot more XEN than the required amount. The requirement was 250 million, and it burned 380,234,771 XEN instead. The second most rare XENFT is also a Limited. An Emerald, number 15045, is the first to reach the top of the list of the most rare Collectors. This item was minted quite early because the AMP is still at 2912 and the EAA is at 2%. The number of VMUs is 124, which may be a factor in rarity ranking, and the term is 207.
A user has their own perception of the collectible value of XENFTs, and it doesn’t need to reflect the marketplace ranking. A true collector will select NFTs that fit his collection based on some specific aspect, and it doesn’t necessarily need to follow the price. For example, someone may choose to create a collection of XENFTs based solely on quotes. The XENFTs contain the quotes of historical figures, like, for example, “Your past does not equal your future” by Tony Robbins or “The further one goes, the less one knows” by Lao Tzu. Another kind of collection can have all the first-ever minted XENFTs from each category and class. Someone may choose to collect just pieces that stand out for their unusual burn, while others may prefer XENFTs that have some gematria involved.
Conclusion
It is not too late to get into the rarity game and create some juicy XENFTs yourself. Creating a community that loves collecting and trading unique items is also something that could create more interest and make the experience more fun and engaging. The real game hasn’t started yet, and as the market evolves and more users come in, the appeal of possessing the OG stuff will also grow.
