With OG:CR selling out on public sale on 16 October, we had a lot of new people checking in on the project. So to make it easier on everyone, we’ve put together a FULL description of how the mechanics work.
We have two sections here. First, check out the quick guide from Danil Krivoruchko about the process from seed to being locked.
Second, check out the questions and answers collected from our Discord AMAs. If you still want to know more, join Discord and ask our community!
A lot of people have also been asking about buying and selling strategies with the OG:Crystals. We’re in an interesting period now, where for the next few months we’ll see dynamic rarity, with changes happening at every stage. After two months, we’ll go to a more “normal” setup with NFT trading and fixed rarity.
Since this is so new, it’s hard to give any advice. The truth is, at this stage, we don’t know if there’s going to be fewer GEN1 crystals than GEN7, or if perhaps by luck, the rarest is going to be a GEN4 or 5.
However, trading before reveal is high risk. You might be sitting on a gold crystal that people will want to pay a premium price for, on the other hand you might be the one buying a rare OG:Crystal at a low floor price.
If you want to grow your minted crystal to GEN7, you will have to let it transfer to several wallets. There are several ways of doing this:
Private sales and trading groups:
People are already creating “trading groups” where members who have wallets with our tribute and collaboration partners’ NFTs are connecting to sell to each other, and let their OG:Crystal come back to the original wallet.
The NFTs that have a chance to add a special feature are: Omnimorphs, Ksoids, CryptoPunks, Meebits, Bored Ape Yacht Club, 89 Seconds Atomized, and Art Blocks Curated (0x059edd72cd353df5106d2b9cc5ab83a52287ac3a contract address) that includes their OG projects Chromie Squiggles, Genesis and Construction.
You don’t need to have a fixed group to do this either. Many people are discussing personal trades in our Discord group.
By using the private sale feature on OpenSea, you can trade directly with anyone you know. Just remember, transferring the crystal from one wallet to another does NOT trigger growth, only a sale does!
Secondary market:
If you’re not attached to your minted crystal, you can of course sell your OG:Crystal on the open market and use the money to trade up to a GEN7. This can happen either through leveraging the market price, or just through pure investment.
Things to consider:
If you buy an OG:Crystal significantly below floor price, you have a chance to get a “dead” feature. Read more about that below!
Also, remember that the only way to have a GEN1 is through minting. Until the OG:Crystals are locked (2 months after public sale), all sales will trigger growth until they reach GEN7.
So as you can see, without a clear idea of what will be the most rare trait or type of OG:Crystal it’s hard to measure rarity. One thing for sure is that we see people trying to get in touch with people with our collab and tribute collections in their wallets — let’s see how this will affect rarity!
THE BASICS OF OG:CRYSTAL GROWTH MECHANICS
1. When an OG:Crystal was bought from the primary market, the user received a “seed”. Users could choose the seed color, but the ultimate form was a mystery until reveal.
2. Five days later, that seed grew into an OG:Crystal, its facets and contours completely individual, and determined by each owner’s unique wallet history and conditions.
3. When that OG:Crystal is sold to someone else, the original crystalline shape will remain, but another new structure will be added, based on the wallet’s unique properties and the transaction history of the new owner.
4. When that OG:Crystal is sold a second time, yet another new structure is added to the two previous ones. With each transaction, there is the added potential to receive a rare item.
5. After two months from the initial sale date, or 1 mint and six sales, every OG:Crystal will be “locked” — new transactions will not influence its shape, structure, or rarity.
6. Each of these remarkable OG:Crystals will be combined into a communal artwork, creating a kind of crystalline reef that reflects each owner, while creating one unique artwork.
CRYSTALLIZING IT ALL: QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
What properties of the OG:Crystal are defined by the wallet data?
The wallet, block number and timestamp of each transaction are the main sources of the random numbers defining various properties of the OG:Crystal including the shape, size, colors and materials. However, all probabilities are affected by the data collected from the past transactions of the wallet — like the amount of ETH and NFTs in the wallet, dynamics of these values over the past three months, amount of transactions, etc. We will reveal the full algorithm description after the OG:CR collection will stop growing to not ruin the element of discovery for the community.
If your wallet contains one of our tribute or collab collections (Omnimorphs, Art Blocks Curated, Ksoids, CryptoPunks, Meebits, BAYC, 89 Seconds), here’s also a chance you can get a special feature based on them.
How do bundles work with OG:CR on OpenSea?
The bundle feature on OpenSea was supported for sales up to 19 October 2021. However, since OpenSea treats all bundle sales as transfers and not sales, it’s unfortunately not something we can fix immediately. The bundle sales that were made before the 19th are now being updated manually by our Dev team.
What does “Active” and “Done” mean on OpenSea?
This shows the status of the crystal in terms of data from the buyer’s wallet which will be used for rendering.
Active means we’re fetching the data on the blockchain and using it to render the new crystal layer.
Done means nothing is fetching or growing and the metadata is updated.
When will crystals stop growing?
There are two ways for an OG:Crystal to stop growing. Every OG:Crystal is limited to 7 iterations of growth (activated by selling). Initial minting is counted as the first iteration, so it could be sold up to 6 times before the growth will be locked. The other factor limiting the growth is the evolution time frame set for the whole OG:CR collection. After two months the collection’s growth process will be complete, and all properties and the appearance of OG:Crystals will be frozen.
What happens if I buy my crystal back?
If the OG:Crystal still has the ability to grow, a new part based on your wallet data will be generated. Some properties of the new crystalline form solely depend on the wallet and OG:Crystal number but others are unique for each transaction. That’s why if you buy the OG:Crystal previously owned by you the newly added part will share something in look with your previous part but will be different in other traits. And the chance to get a rare one persists for any selling/buying transaction.
Also, if you have a “special NFT” (any one of these: Omnimorphs, Art Blocks Curated, Ksoids, CryptoPunks, Meebits, BAYC, 89 Seconds) and it didn’t “trigger” the first time in your wallet, it might on the next round.
How does seed color affect evolution?
Your color choice at minting does affect the first generation shade. There is also then the chance that the next generation(s) will also have that color. Like other uncontrollable aspects of each crystal’s traits, rare, special or collab traits may also appear, and the color can be overwritten if the owner is lucky enough to get a special trait or rare crystal.
Will something bad happen if I transfer my crystal to another wallet or to and from a hard wallet?
Just sending (transfer transaction) doesn’t trigger the growth. You can send it whatever times you want — the crystal will be the same.
Why isn’t my GEN updating on OpenSea?
With so much metadata processing both on our and on OpenSea, we’re currently seeing delays of up to two hours. We’re working on this as we speak and are aiming for this update time on our end to be reduced to just a few minutes. Chain of custody is available for all crystals, so if you dig, you can still decipher what GEN a crystal is.
Why isn’t my crystal growing?
All trades are recorded and affect the look, it just isn’t visible until the reveal. If the crystal was minted (GEN1) and sold 3 times on reveal you’ll see GEN4 crystal.
Why 5 days until initial reveal?
We needed these 5 days to render the first versions for each of 10k crystals. After the reveal, each sale/buy transaction will trigger an update for a particular crystal and it will be treated in a first come first serve manner. We have 20 workstations on the render farm and each crystal renders under 5 mins so I hope the updated time will be within 5–15 mins after reveal.
After it stops all data will be frozen and stored in IPFS so the rarity will not change after that. So the rarity will be dynamic while the collection grows, and static after it’s locked.
What if I keep transacting back and forth from the same two wallets?
Each time the same algorithm generates the new part of the crystal based on the buyer’s wallet/data. So basically every time you buy a crystal you have a chance for a rare type part to be added to the crystal.
What is the so called “dead” or “reef decay” effect all about? How does it occur?
The algorithm that triggers this effect is set on a sliding scale for sales below the current floor price. The further you transact below the floor, the greater the odds of triggering this effect. Transactions near the floor have virtually no chance of triggering it. But as you get further and further away from the floor, the odds increase. Substantial odds wont kick in until the transaction price is significantly below floor. The floor price is not dependent on gen — whatever the collection floor price is the price used to calculate these odds.
How many possible combinations are there?
It is a generative art, not a combination of pre-built pieces. Every piece of OG:Crystal is generated based on the data so the chance of getting perfectly similar crystals is close to 0 even if you spend a few thousand years generating them.
What will decide the “rarity” of the original crystal? Could rarity change from sale to sale depending on what aspects will be added?
The short answer — the community will! Even though crystals look very different we had to combine them into larger groups to assign traits. Otherwise, 3rd party rarity algorithms will be useless. Each OG:Crystal part will have 2 traits — the shape type, and the material which also defines color. Traits for all pieces will be combined together and updated on OpenSea while the collection grows. After it stops all data will be frozen and stored in IPFS so the rarity will not change after that. So the rarity will be dynamic while the collection grows, and will stop changing after the collection will be frozen. But again — it’s up to the community to decide what has value. A single-piece crystal or a 7-piece one? All pieces with the same color or multi-color? Etc.
Does whoever designed the algorithm have a scope for what structural combinations will impact rarity?
It’s all about mapping particular metadata from the wallet to probabilities of some crystal traits. The rarity will be dynamic, because each sale can result in the birth of a new rare piece and change the current balance. After two months from public sale the collection will be locked and after that the usual tools like Rarity Sniper could be applied to check what traits ended up the rarest.
If no one buys the OG:Crystal from me, my crystal will not grow to full, it won’t have a chance of being rare?
If you don’t sell, it means it doesn’t evolve, so there is no additional chance of getting a rare piece. BUT you overlook your own chances for rarity on the minting process. Internally minting treated almost exactly (with some necessary differences) as any buy/sell transaction. So on minting you have exactly the same chances to get a rare quality as anyone who will buy a crystal on the secondary market.
Is it true that transferring between 2 wallets 7 times has a reduced chance of a rarity in transformation vs transferring to 6 different wallets?
It depends on the wallets content and other metadata. Some wallets are more “lucky” (no, it is not about how much ETH or NFTs you have there), so selling between two such wallets have much more chances for rare pieces that selling between 7 less lucky.
How can I get a mono colored crystal? Is that kind of rarity reserved for maxed out wallets?
We can’t give all the algorithm details yet (we plan to make it open AFTER the growth of the collection stops), but I want to assure you — there is nothing a maxed out wallet can get that can not show up in a brand-new wallet. It’s all about probabilities.
The mechanics mention characteristics such as wallet balance, past transactions etc. Is the intention to stop people “gaming” the system and sending crystals to newly minted wallets?
You still will have to pay gas, OpenSea fee and secondary royalties. Other than that nothing stops you from “selling” the crystal to yourself. All wallets are anonymous after all, so there is no way to tell if 2 wallets belong to the same person unless we use some sort KYC for that (which will be an overkill for an art project).
Why was it decided to end growth at 7 iterations? Why stop the fun there?
It was absolutely aesthetic based. Around the 7th iteration the Crystals start to look like a mess. Too many visual distractions and too much noise. So we decided to cap at seven. The Art component of the project has the same significance to us as blockchain mechanics.
Is the art rendered dynamically?
Yes, otherwise how would we know your wallet data? I wish we could see in the future and just pre-render all of this, so much easier!
Will we see the same crystal pieces on different crystals or will they truly be generated per basis using the data on every individual crystal?
There are zero pre-modeled elements in this collection. All geometry is procedurally generated based on the wallet and transaction metadata. The pieces can share similar materials or be generated by the same “branch” in the algorithm, so you’ll be able to tell crystal “families” apart but other than that all pieces are unique.
Will the earlier stages of the OG:Crystal available somewhere on IPFS after it has grown?
The evolution of crystals will be kept on our server for later usage on the site and in museum exhibitions. After the collection stops growing (60 days from the sale launch) all the latest versions of crystals as well as metadata used for the generation will be stored on IPFS and the links will be frozen in the NFTs. As for intermediate versions, we haven’t decided yet if it’s worth to store them on IPFS too because technically they are not on-chain assets anymore.
Will it be possible to see previous generations of a crystal easily?
We will store the growth iterations of course and plan to make it accessible after the growth of the collection will be finished.
Will the renders just be flat images or gifs or 3d assets like gltf?
It would not be cost rational to do this: 10k crystals on-demand, each frame takes 3–5 mins on the high-end workstation. But we do have a stretch-goal after which we start to converting all OG:Crystals to glb format suitable for AR and Metaverse usage. They are all generated in 3D so it would be a pity to not show off them from all angles!
Are you guys using actual crystals as inspiration?
Danil researched many different types of crystals used as references. He also went through a Crystallography course (on YouTube but pretty legit) to catch up with Michael’s knowledge of crystals.
Why 10,301 seeds? What is the significance of this number?
10301 is a very interesting number for several reasons. First of all, it’s a prime number. Meaning it can be divided only to 1 or itself. Danil’s sees it as a symbol of the community we are trying to build here — we ARE the Crystal Reef and it thrives only as a whole, it can not be divided.
It is also a Palindromic Prime — it remains the same if you read it left-to-right or right-to-left. So it has symmetry just as any crystal does.
Last but not least, it is close to the 10k limit that became the golden standard for collections in the past months. We didn’t want to inflate this amount as some other collections did. And making it much smaller will reduce the chances of having a diverse community of unique wallets. Which in turn reduces the chances of having interesting crystal combinations during the growth.
