Ready or not, the metaverse is here, and it is rapidly expanding as a host of designers flock to join it. The latest company to embrace digital reality is fashion and jewellery brand Ambush, which is rethinking its bold ‘Pow!’ jewellery as non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Supply of 2,022 units (1,980 SOLID BG + 42 UNIQUE TOKYO AMBIENCE BG)
The initial sale has sold out. Please check out the collection on OpenSea.
The metaverse is AMBUSH®ed with the first official emergence of the POW!®️ NFT series.
The POW!®️ REBOOT Rings merge virtual and real, granting access to exclusive drops, experiences, and more from Tokyo to Web 3, ambushdesign. com spawns ambushdesign
2,022 sentient rings are easily transportable, and gives first access to other forms of energy mined in the AMBUSH®️ SILVER FCTRY (Our metaverse spaceship) activities coming up such as EXCLUSIVE ITEM RELEASES -EVENTS -RESERVED LINE for upcoming AMBUSH®️ COLLABORATION drops (terms apply for each project) in ambushdesign. io/
42 units with The POW!®️ TOKYO AMBIENCE BACKGROUND has 3 gradient motifs:
- TOKYO HEAT with pink and green gradient
- TOKYO SUNRISE with orange red and blue gradient
- TOKYO NIGHT with dark blue and canary yellow gradient
1,980 with 18 SOLID BACKGROUND
Each POW!® and BACKGROUND color will unlock different access.
UPDATE (February 4, 2022): AMBUSH has plans to venture into the metaverse, with its POW!® design being rebranded into a series of 2,022 minted NFTs. Titled POW!® “Reboot” NFT, the collection features multiple variations of the once-iconic accessory, doused in colorways of “Glitter Purple,” “Neon Green” and “Matte Gradient
The brand’s digital assets will serve as a membership card, allowing its holders to gain exclusive entry to physical and online events. Collectors will also have priority access to future limited-edition collaborations and exclusive NFT drops.
Debuted via an NFT video, the POW! ring — a piece emblematic of the early days of the label — comes in a coat of gold and is toggled in a circular motion. The item is comprised of a series of stacked pixels, featuring a “POW!” speech bubble engraved on the front while AMBUSH branding makes an appearance on its bridge. Celebrities such as Kanye West, Pharrell Williams and A$AP Rocky have donned the classic accessory.
POW! Energon will be available on the label’s OpenSea and Discord channels starting from February.
PoW based NFTs also are mineable NFTs. It is a new form in the NFT market. Since PoW requires energy, this feature adds cost to mining these NFTs, and the visualization has given birth to the «art generated by computing power,» similar to the «art generated by algorithms». However, the development of such NFT has just begun. Most PoW NFTs like MoonCat is just formalist PoW. Besides, the mining algorithm and production mechanism of PoW NFT are not fair. Unlike these PoW NFTs, Hacash Diamond’s PoW design is very similar to Bitcoin, but it is not on the Ethereum chain.
@kenyouKen You
NFT stands for non-fungible token. It is used to represent «unique» assets. The opposite of NFT is FT, fungible token. Each unit of FT has the same value and can be exchanged, such as gold, bitcoin, etc. NFT can be subdivided into many types like avatar, game, trading card, text, artwork, certificate, etc. For example, CryptoPunk is an avatar NFT and CryptoKitty is a game NFT.
transition metal: 22
reactive nonmetal: 25
2021 в 17:06, leopold89 сказал:
первая версия протокола была запущена 9 марта, потом разработчик остановил майнинг и проапргредйил контракт и запустился заново 12 часов назад на примерно 600-700 атомах. Сейчас сминчено уже 1400 атомов, после 2048 номера майнинг усложнится в 3 раза и цена майнинга НФТ также вырастет в 2 раза. Потом сложность майнинга возрастет на 4096 атомах, потом на 8192. На 16384 взорвется бомба сложности и сложность будет расти каждый добытый атом, т. теоретически майнинг ноулимит, но на практике вряд ли наминтят больше 16400 штук. Также внутри самих атомов есть более редкие элементы, типа ионного заряда и он есть не у всех атомов. Более того, стоимость нового минта распределяется текущим держателям атомов. в общем в этом проекте есть все. и POW майнинг, и элемент лудки (можно вытащить редкий заряженный атом) и финансовое подкрепление. по слухам на Фаерфоксе майнится лучше, чем на гугл хроме
Сам деплоер довольно активный, пилит какие то обновления на сайт, общается с опенси и комьюнити. Комьюнити тоже довольно вовлеченное, хоть и не сильно большое: делится редким уловом, помогают с настройкой майнинга и т.
Ни дискорда, ни телеги на момент моего поста вроде как не было (ну или я плохо искал ), поэтому решил исправиться
The price of NFTs, especially profile-picture NFTs like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape, continuously skyrocket attracting great attention to the NFT market in the process.
In addition to profile-picture NFTs, the market is made up of many other NFT types, including trading cards, generative art, and games.
Each NFT type has its representative projects.
The wealth resulting from the prosperity of select projects in the NFT market continues to inspire NFT collectors and newcomers to look for the next artistic breakthrough and blue-chip NFT.
Also known as the «Mineable NFT,» PoW NFT is a new NFT type that has the potential to ignite a new collection trend.
To understand PoW NFT, we can first take a look at PoW coins. Two of the most well-known PoW coins are Bitcoin and Dogecoin. Besides, though always claiming the transfer from PoW to PoS, Ethereum — besides always claiming a transfer from PoW to PoS, is strictly a PoW coin.
Despite the fact that the cryptocurrency market is full of scam tokens like ERC-20 and BEP-20, according to data from crypto state, the PoW coins account for over 60% of the entire market.
CPUs and GPUs are no longer the machines used to mine PoW coins, today professional ASIC miners are used. These changes mainly resulted from miners’ pursuit of efficiency and cost control after PoW coins have scaled up.
PoW is important in cryptocurrency. Bitcoin uses PoW as its consensus protocol to realize distributed ledger and ensure the security of the ledger.
At the same time, PoW provides added fairness to the distribution of Bitcoin. After more than ten years of development, Bitcoin has formed a stable production cost on a global scale because of the PoW mechanism.
As a result, its relatively stable price and investment-profit matrix contribute to miners’ faith in becoming long-term holders. Likewise, PoW’s importance also applies to Ethereum and Dogecoin.
PoW is extremely important for cryptocurrency in terms of market value, technology, security, fair distribution in the early stage, and the formation of long-term sustainability. It can be concluded that cryptocurrency cannot last without the PoW mechanism.
One may wonder if PoW is just as important to NFTs as it is to cryptocurrency? What makes PoW NFT valuable?
The rest of this article will center on these questions and explore answers to them.
The article consists of 3 parts:
1 PoW NFT on Ethereum: MoonCatResecure、Atom、MineablePunks
2 PoW NFT on Hacash: Hacash Diamond
PoW consensus inherently has great potential to retain value, because it ensures the fairness of cryptocurrency mining and prevents the asset from being controlled by centralized institutions. Besides, the cost of mining lays the foundation for its value.
Today, NFT market is flooded with a large number of uninspiring projects, most of which are just for fomo and speculation. If NFT wants to pursue stability and long-term value, can it be combined with PoW consensus and become the new form of a store of value?
In the article, Ken analyzes the history and future development of PoW NFTs in detail, from the perspective of arts, mining difficulty and bidding mechanism. The article also thoroughly investigates 4 exemplary representative PoW NFT projects, and confirms that HACD, which emerged as early as 2018, is the first real PoW NFT.
Although HACD is on a non-Ethereum chain, it has the fairest mechanism for mining, bidding and circulating. HACD’s mechanism has successfully stood the test of time, and it has the potential to lead the development of the entire PoW NFT market.
Adhering to this judgment, Ken You established Hacash. Diamonds, and launched a decentralized trading platform and a secured trading service platform, focusing on HACD’s trading, collection, art exhibition and other services.
Up to now, Hacash. Diamonds has helped more than 1,000 collectors to collect HACD, and achieved a transaction volume of more than 1 million USD. The highest single HACD transaction price is 47,000 USD. This data outperforms in the collection platform of the entire HACD market. However, it is still tiny compared to big NFT exchanges like Opensea.
Hacash. Diamonds’ founder Ken You said: «There is a large bubble in the NFT market now, and 99% of NFTs will cease to exist in the future. Hacash. Diamonds aims at building a boutique NFT agency that serves collectors interested in historic and innovative NFTs. We believe that HACD is the answer you ask about the future of NFT, because it is on a new and right track: Proof-of-work. Besides, HACD is the first NFT on a chain other than Bitcoin and Ethereum. Will the NFT based on the Bitcoin mining mechanism become the next mainstream store of value? Let’s wait and see
First, the safest way is to let time help you to choose. Projects that are of little value would disappear gradually within a year, three months, or even two weeks. If some projects have been tested for a long time, say three years, and are more and more prosperous, we have no reasons to believe that they will suddenly lose all value tomorrow. This is determined by the Lindy effect.
Thirdly, try to find projects that existed long before the wave breaks out, rather than projects that were hurriedly launched to cater to the market after the track was hot. Those projects which are one step ahead and correctly anticipate the market in advance are more likely to recognize the essence of the phenomenon and create fundamental value.
Moreover, a project should have survived and grown steadily without vanishment. After all, 99% of projects that are dead will never come back to the stage. If a project becomes completely obscured at a certain stage, then there is a large probability that this unknown situation will last forever. Thus, those projects that have kept active all the time are more likely to live better in the future.
Last but not least, choose projects that are mostly community-driven and operate spontaneously, rather than projects that are completely dominated by the project side who put a lot of money into the media and key opinion leaders for strong promotion. After all, the essential value of the crypto world is decentralization, and a purely community-driven project can minimize the threat of unrealistic information and fictitious demand generated by those staring at our pockets.
If you agree with these selected aspects mentioned above, then we solemnly recommend to you a project that fully satisfies all the above criteria and, for some special reasons, is not currently receiving much attention in the market. We will enumerate the fascinating features and innovations of this NFT collection. For the time being, we will call it ‘Diamond’ for short.
- PoW NFT: Yes, it is ‘mined’ like mining Bitcoin. Energy and computing power are required to mine outputs. In fact, it created a brand-new collection category of PoW NFTs, and the second PoW NFT appeared in March 2021, after an interval of 3 years
- Text NFT: It is the first ‘Text NFT’, and it is more concise than the popular text NFT ‘Loot’. Diamond consists of only 6 uppercase letters, generated randomly from the specially selected 16 letters “WTYUIAHXVMEKBSZN”. Some names of the diamonds that have been mined out are quite interesting such as ‘BUYBUY’, ‘MYBANK’, ‘ETHMAN’ and so on.
- Larger quantity: Its theoretical total amount is much larger than that of general NFT collections, so it can establish a much larger group of potential collectors than general projects, which is beneficial for the liquidity of collections and the scale of consensus groups. Since it is composed of 6-digit letters, its theoretical aggregate limit is equal to 16^6, which is 16,777,216 pieces. Only around 50,000 diamonds have been mined in the first three years.
- Infinitely Mineable: It is the first “infinitely mineable” NFT. Although its theoretical upper limit is 16,777,216, since its mining difficulty increases exponentially with the number of diamonds mined and never decreases, it will never be possible to mine all the diamonds. At some point, the mining difficulty will surpass Bitcoin and continue to increase until infinite difficulty. In the early stage when the difficulty is not high, a maximum of 58 coins are mined every day.
- DNS NFT: It is the first NFT with an additional DNS function. In Hacash’s payment channel, the diamond name can be used as the payment address, and the system will automatically resolve it to the account address with the corresponding diamond. Since diamonds are composed of 6-digit letters, it is equivalent to the short address or customized address function like Ethereum ENS.
- On-Chain Generative Art or Energy Substantiated Art: Unlike most image-based NFTs, each diamond is not artificially designed or drawn by a writer or project party but is “mined” by a computing machine that consumes energy. Each diamond is randomly generated and unique, just like natural gemstones, which can be assigned value and be aesthetically assessed in terms of a literal value, number, shape, color matching, and purity. etc. Diamonds that satisfy many perspectives at one time are very rare and worth collecting.
- Mystery box for miners: Miners have no way of knowing the shape and color of the diamond until they spend energy to find one and successfully bid, just like we never know how buried gemstones look like until they are dug. This greatly stimulates the miners’ zeal and interest.
- On-Chain Bidding: When many diamonds are mined in one diamond-mining period, miners are required to bid for the right to package the only diamond in this period. This bidding is equivalent to a real-time public auction among miners globally wise. Everyone can instantly and transparently see the auction data, which is conducive to reflecting the current value of diamonds and market demand.
- Fair Distribution: 58 diamonds are mined out every day, and it will take at least 800 years to mine all the total amount of 16.77 million. You will always have a chance to get one diamond at the current hash rate and real-time bidding level, rather than just buying it from existing holders at very dubious prices. Those NFT collections with a total amount of only 10,000 or even a few hundred are often minted by internal relations and preemptive giant whales within a few hours after going online. It is difficult to imagine that this is fair for ordinary collectors.
- Stable Value: As the difficulty of mining diamonds continues to increase and never decrease, the calculating power of mining is highly demanded, that is, the production cost of diamonds is getting higher and higher. This would result in mining a diamond being profitable only if its market value exceeds the marginal production cost of the latest diamond. This also means that after a certain mining difficulty is reached, new diamonds will only be mined if the market price of the diamond keeps increasing. Although diamonds can never be mined wholly, the difficulty mechanism that only increases and never decreases will automatically adjust the production of new diamonds according to demand equilibrium. And the production of new diamonds will slow down when the price of diamonds falls. This will bring stability to the diamond’s value.
- Combinability: Since there are more diamonds, they are different in literal value, number, shape, main color, and color matching. Unlike other avatars NFTs that can usually only be sold separately, diamonds can be sold in very diverse ways to combine into sets, such as ‘Nine Shape Set’ and ‘Love Four-piece Set’, which are composed of 9 shapes and 4 ‘Love’ diamonds respectively. This greatly increases the interest and charm of diamond collections.
- Pure Community-Driven: After reading the above content, everyone must have doubts. Since it is a project with so many exciting innovations, why has it not yet received large-scale attention from the market? The reason is very simple. This is a purely community-driven project. It relies entirely on word-of-mouth. There is no project party to write those exaggerated promotional articles and spend money on various media. As a result, diamonds have been spread only among core enthusiasts. In addition, the lack of circulation on Ethereum is also an important reason for the slow spread of its market.
This project is called Hacash Diamond, or HACD for short. It is the native and the only NFT asset on the Hacash chain that focuses on value storage, currency, and payment. In the form of PoW NFT collection, it endeavors to achieve the goal of becoming a better value storage target than BTC.
When HACD was first mined out, it was almost unknown. Later, as word of mouth spread step by step, the core community began to trade, and the transaction price gradually increased from 1USDT to 10U, 20U, and later 50U. Up to now, the transaction price of an ordinary HACD is around 150U. While the highest transaction price of a pure royal blue diamond is 47,000 USDT, which exceeds the market price of BTC in the same period. The scale of computing power and the number of community collectors are also expanding, slowly but surely.
If you intend to invest in a long-term and stable project in the various NFT collections with a huge return and to reduce the risk of investment as much as possible, I believe that HACD is an excellent choice in every aspect.
Если вы читаете это, скорее всего, вы знаете об NFT — невзаимозаменяемых токенах, которые покупаются, продаются и торгуются на основе цифрового блокчейна. Но каковы их цены, риски и побочные эффекты?
Тем, кто незнаком с ситуацией, предлагаем ознакомиться с другими материалами, рассказывающими о том, что такое NFT и как они создаются.
NFT — это единственные в своём роде образчики цифрового искусства, и в последние несколько месяцев они просто захватили художественный мир. Однако, сами по себе NFT — не новость. Но рост их популярности привлёк повышенное внимание к тому, как каждая транзакция отражается на окружающей среде.
Например, Ethereum (Эфириум), одна из криптовалют, требует порядка 50 тераватт-часов энергии ежегодно, что соответствует «карбоновому следу» такой страны, как Иордания. Данные взяты у Digiconomist, организации, которая занимается отслеживанием «непредвиденные последствия цифровых тенденций».
Это масса энергии. И напомним вам, что существует более сотни разновидностей криптовалют, каждая со своим потреблением энергии. Критики и законодатели, такие как сенатор Элизабет Уоррен, хотят «обуздать» потребление энергии криптовалютами, в то время как энтузиасты аплодируют их автономности и децентрализованности.
Итак, почему NFT потребляют столько энергии? И что можно поделать с этим? И, учитывая все обстоятельства, стоит ли цена NFT тех преимуществ, которые они предоставляют художникам?
Почему NFT используют столько энергии?
Чтобы понять, почему NFT требует столько энергии, важно понять, как работает блокчейн. Блокчейн, в котором живут такие криптовалюты, как Биткойн и Эфириум, действует как распределенный реестр, в котором записываются данные и детали транзакций, которые может видеть любой участник процесса.
Процесс утверждения и верификации данных, основанный на блокчейне, очень энергозатратен и приводит к производству и генерирует парниковые газы наравне с выбросами малых стран. Кроме того, его обвиняют в сбоях электросетей по всему миру. Китай планирует резко ограничить торговлю и майнинг криптовалют в следующие четыре года, поощряя финансовые учреждения страны не вмешиваться в этот бизнес.
Так как, NFT использует платформу блокчейна для клеймения, размещения и продажи цифрового искусства, они также вносят свой вклад в энергопотребление системы в целом, согласно данным Келер.
«Транзакции, происходящие при использовании верификации (PoW) с помощью блокчейна, потребляют большое количество энергии», — говорит она. «PoW — — это механизм консенсуса, который используется для проверки транзакций и защиты блокчейна без необходимости в центральном контрольном органе. PoW по определению является высоко энергопотребляющим механизмом, так как основана на соревновании так называемых майнеров по решению определённых задач».
«Чем больше майнеров вовлечено в процесс, тем лучше защищён блокчейн, но и выше расход энергии», — заключает Келер.
Как вычисляется «карбоновый след» и потребление энергии от продаж и покупок NFT?
Масса организаций и отдельных людей занимаются отслеживанием «карбонового следа» и потребления энергии, связанного с криптовалютами и NFT. Среди них Offsetra, Memo Akten, academics, и крупные финансовые организации. Многие оценки дают большие и пугающие цифры, но одна, подтвержденная исследователями, приравнивает перечисление одного NFT к поездке в 500 миль на среднем автомобиле с бензиновым двигателем, согласно New York Times.
Потребление энергии и «карбоновый след» — не одно и то же.
Потребление энергии расшифровать легче. Его можно оценить, используя «скорость хеширования» — мощность, которую компьютеры используют для добычи и обработки транзакций блокчейна, плюс потребление энергии оборудованием, выполняющим вычисления. С другой стороны, подсчитать «карбоновый след» сложнее, по ряду причин. Главные из них — отсутствие прозрачности, использование ископаемых видов топлива и «различные энергетические комбинации».
«Трудно точно узнать, где локализуются майнеры и какой источник энергии они используют», — говорит Келер. «Необходимо больше данных из всей отрасли, чтобы сделать лучшую оценку и обсудить источники энергии, используемые для майнинга, на общесистемном уровне, а не на основе анекдотов, как это происходит в настоящее время».
Некоторые цифровые художники, из соображений экологического характера, переходят на меньшие торговые платформы для продажи NFT, или «боковые цепочки» — небольшие блокчейны, работающие рядом с более крупными. Однако, меньшие блокчейны, или NFT, авторы которых задумываются об экологии, переключаются на модель PoS (Proof-of-Stake), которая требует меньших компьютерных мощностей и основана на том, сколько единиц криптовалюты есть в распоряжении участника процесса.
Блокчейн криптовалюты Эфириум играет с переходом с PoW (Proof-of-work) на PoS уже некоторое время, и если такое тестирование закончится полной сменой модели, это может снизить энергозатраты Эфириума на 99,9%.
Решение проблемы разрушительного воздействия криптовалюты на окружающую среду может быть таким же простым, как обновление технологии, чтобы сделать ее более экологичной и энергоэффективной, или полное отключение NFT от криптовалюты и майнинга криптовалют. Но пока не сделано ничего.
А как насчёт компенсации по углероду?
У NFT есть «карбоновый след». Например, скажем, вас заинтересовал NFT популярного художника. Вы хотите сделать на него ставку. Но то же самое делают тысячи других людей. Чем больше сделано ставок, чем больше продаж, тем больше на это расходуется майнинга и, как следствие, мощности компьютеров.
Многие, если не большинство, поклонников NFT, сознают значительный вред, наносимый окружающей среде, и обратились к компенсации за выбросы углерода в качестве временной паллиативной меры. Это может означать пожертвование части средств от продажи NFT организации по защите окружающей среды, расчет выбросов углерода с помощью таких инструментов, как Offsetra, или просто посадку деревьев. Но, согласно Келер, для борьбы с ущербом, наносимым криптовалютой, нужно сделать гораздо больше.
«Компенсация — лучше, чем ничего», — говорит она. «Но уменьшение потребления энергии — гораздо лучше. Было бы здорово, если бы платформы были прозрачными, но, насколько мне известно, прямо сейчас нет ничего, что требовало бы от них такой прозрачности».
Учитывая экологические аргументы «против», какие преимущества всё же получает художник, занимаясь NFT?
Для таких художников, как Мёрфи (Murphy), NFT поменяли правила игры полностью. Это оказалось настолько доходным, что вскоре после мервой мартовской продажи Мёрфи смог оставить работу и стать художником, живущим за счёт своего творчества, чего он не мог добиться за предыдущие шесть лет. «NFT оплачивает все мои счета и приносит большую часть моего дохода», — сказал он. «Это оказало большое влияние на мою жизнь».
Мёрфи использует Offsetra, чтобы вычислить «карбоновый след» от своих продаж NFT и говорит, что в настоящее время он способен компенсировать 40-50 тонн углерода, в то время, как его реальный выброс составляет менее тонны, и также жертвует 5% своего дохода на дополнительные экологические меры. (Одна тонна карбоновых выбросов, по данным Агентства по охране окружающей среды, соответствует продаже 121 643 сотовых телефонов
Другой путь, которым Мёрфи «возвращает долги» — это пожертвование в Минтинг-фонд (Mint Fund). Это организация, которая поддерживает людей, впервые «клеймящих» свои файлы как NFT. «Это помогает людям в других странах, в том числе в бедных регионах, или в регионах с гиперинфляцией, жители которых не имеют другого пути попасть на этот рынок», — говорит он.
В будущем, Мёрфи хотел бы, чтобы большее количество платформ для продажи NFT запускало бы программу, автоматически отчисляющую определённый процент с продаж на покрытие карбоновых загрязнений и другую экологическую активность.
И, как и другие криптоэнтузиасты, Мерфи не задумывается о возможности того, что пузырь NFT «лопнет» в ближайшее время.
«Поскольку это одноуровневое соединение, я считаю, что, пока люди пользуются им, оно никуда не денется. Ну, если не исчезнет сам Интернет, конечно, но это не кажется мне сколько-нибудь вероятным», — говорит он.
А что насчёт падения цен на NFT?
Весной этого года, цены на NFT достигли исторического пика, благодаря, в том числе, вниманию СМИ, которое, помимо прочего, привлекло к этой области знаменитостей, известных художников и музыкантов.
Однако, в этом месяце, интерес к токенам снизился, причём резко. (Примечание — статья датирована концом Июня 2021 — АК). Согласно данным нового криптовалютного сайта Протос (Protos), пузырь NFT достиг пика в начале Мая, и в последующие шесть недель продажи упали более, чем на 90%. В отчёте указывается также, что «количество активных NFT-кошельков» упало на 70%, что, возможно, говорит о сомнении в долгосрочной устойчивости всей системы NFT.
Это впечатляющее падение активности, связанной с NFT, иллюстрированное и детализированное в таблицах, графиках и данных таких сайтов, как Протос (Protos) и CoinMarketCap, может быть вызвано множеством причин, например недавним падением стоимости Биткойна. Или же, художникам становится всё труднее и труднее компенсировать карбоновые загрязнения, учитывая нестабильность цен на этом рынке, особенно, если принять в расчёт, что никто точно не знает, как будет развиваться этот сектор в течение, скажем, пяти лет.
Возможно, конечно, что криптовалюты и NFT снова поднимут популярность и будут следовать циклическому сценарию «бумов и спадов». Но непредсказуемости, вместе с высокой климатической ценой, может оказаться достаточно, чтобы отпугнуть многих людей навсегда.
‘Pow!’ rings as jewellery NFTs
The Ambush rings, first released in 2008, are now to become a collection of 2,022 NFTs as part of the ‘Pow!’ reboot. As well as the NFT itself, customers will receive access to physical products and events, as well as a host of other perks.
‘You have to think bigger than what is in front of you,’ Ahn adds. ‘Web3 tech is a system that will help creators to expand more than the physical form to connect to customers. We have always been keen to find a new way to connect, and the time can’t be any better than now, since more people are familiar with this space. If we started too early it would have taken so much work to try to convince people to understand, but now even a kid down the street knows what an NFT is
The designs are as bold and graphic as the original, with a creative process that was reassuringly uncomplicated: ‘There aren’t many challenges, as many of my designs are very graphic. So far so good. It’s just the size of data that gets heavier the more detailed we get. It’s pop art, it’s a statement, it’s a thought, it’s a way of thinking. The ring reflects all of this, beyond just a one-dimension aesthetic. ’ §
MoonCatRescue [1][2]
Every NFT collector should have heard of MoonCatRescue. The vast majority think it is just an early veteran NFT that only falls behind CryptoPunk. However, it is the earliest PoW NFT on the Ethereum chain. The first MoonCat NFT was created on August 10th, 2017 by its two creators, who are known as Ponderware.
MoonCat is a pixel cat automatically generated by a hash. Initially, there were more than 4 billion possible MoonCats variants, but only 25,600 of them can be added to the smart contract, and are now all in circulation. To get a MoonCat, you only need to connect the Ethereum wallet to the website and use website(CPUs) to search for MoonCat. Since it just relies on a simple «generating algorithm,» a MoonCat can be located in a few minutes without consuming too much computing power.
After finding MoonCat, the system will prompt whether to rescue it or leave it on the moon. If you choose to save it, you will cost around 0. 02 ETH to mint to become its new owner and give it a home on the chain. You can choose to put your MoonCat away or give it to someone else. If you want, you can also choose to name your MoonCat. MoonCat can only be named once, the name is permanently immutable even if it is adopted by others.
The scarcity of MoonCat is mainly reflected in the fact that 64 of them are pure black or white. They are MoonCat’ ancestors. In addition, if the Moon Cat’s number is close to #0, which represents the first generated Moon Cat, it is generally more valuable.
Hacash Diamond [3]
Hacash Diamond is not running on the Ethereum chain but has its own chain—Hacash. The project started from an anonymous white paper. There is no founder or investor manipulating the project. That is, Hacash Diamond’s development and operation are completely dominated by the community and the market. On May 16, 2019, the first Hacash Diamond was born. It was the first non-Ethereum PoW NFT and also the first text-based NFT. The generated text of the first Hacash Diamond is «NHMYYM».
Each Hacash Diamond consists of 6 random letters and is in a special diamond shape. In total, there are 1677,7216 diamonds in 9 different shapes and of 16 colors decorating them. Theoretically, 58 diamonds can be mined each day and it takes 800 years to get all of them mined. However, the difficulty of mining Hacash Diamond will gradually increase over time, and will never decrease. After a certain point in time, its mining difficulty will exceed that of Bitcoin. And it is estimated that only 100,000 Hacash Diamond will be in circulation by 2025.
Hacash Diamond requires CPUs to mine. In theory, like Bitcoin, as the mining difficulty increases and public approbation increases, ASIC miners can be developed for mining. Moreover, after a Hacash Diamond being mined, another PoW token on the Hacash chain, HAC, is required for bidding. The Hacash Diamond will go to the highest bidder. When the market demand for Hacash Diamond decreases, it can be closed for mining.
The scarcity of Hacash Diamond mainly comes from the unique combination of 8 shapes, 16 colors, and random letters from «WTYUIAHXVMEKBSZN». In addition, the scarcity also depends on the community and the market’s creativity to interpret these combinations.
Each PoW NFT Atom is based on the token’s hash, which determines elements such as the ionic charge, the colour palette, the position and motion of each electron, and many more subtle features. Its total is theoretically unlimited. Its total amount depends on demands in the market, and the mining difficulty goes up with the number of mined atoms. After more than 40,000 atoms are mined, it would become hard for each atom to be produced.
The difficulty of mining will increase by 3 times in each cycle, which means that the average production time will also increase by 3 times. Since there is no upper limit on the number of atoms, the system has an explosion of mining difficulty in the 14th cycle (starting at number #16384). After that, it becomes infinitely difficult for an atom to be mined, meaning that the upper limit of atom NFT is 16384. The cost of mining increases by 2 times per cycle, and the current cost of mining each atom is 0. 18 ETH.
Depending on the configuration of the personal computer, the average production time for an POW NFT is different. According to the testing results, it takes 1 minute for a laptop to mine the 258th PoW NFT, and an average of 1 hour to get the 2048th PoW NFT. When the number rises to 8192, it takes 6 hours on average.
The scarcity of POW NFT lies in the number of atoms. The higher the number of atoms, the more difficult it is to mine the PoW NFT, the scarcer it is, and the higher its value.
A brief history of PoW and PoW NFT
To understand the emerging market of PoW NFT, we must first understand what PoW is. PoW is short for Proof-of-Work. It’s an economic countermeasure against service and resource misuse or Denial of Service(DoS) attacks.
This idea was first proposed by Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor in an academic paper in 1993 and the term PoW was invented by Markus Jakobsson and Ari Juels in 1999.
We can trace PoW NFT’s origin to Crypto trading cards in 1993. It was proposed by Hal Finney, most likely by Bitcoin’s creator Satoshi Nakamoto. It is also widely recognized as the earliest NFT prototype.
Although the Crypto trading card was not really implemented at the time, we can infer that each card’s hash was not randomly generated with equal probability, otherwise, there would be an unlimited number of cards with identical value.
As a result, these cards could have collection value only if their hash conforms to a certain established rule, such as the fixed PoW difficulty.
If there are no established rules for generating effective hash, the potential number of crypto trading cards is infinite, and collectible crypto trading cards must have some kind of rare hash value result. For example:
The first one will be more collectible than the second because it is «good-looking. » Such a well-organized hash is derived from PoW computation, greater hash power will result in a «better-looking» hash number.
Then the Crypto trading cards mentioned by Finney, in every respect, must be PoW, otherwise, they will have no value for collection, transaction, and circulation.
In 1998, Nick Szabo, the father of the smart contract, invented Bit Gold, which was an expensive encrypted gold that is computed using electricity.
Due to the unpredictability involved in generating hash, the only way to find a valid hash is to compute it over and over again until we find a valid one.
Such a valid hash serves as proof that its owner actually consumed computing power to find it and anyone who finds a valid hash will own it.
Since each Bit Gold is represented by a unique hash, the cost of computing the hash and deriving the Bit Gold varies, resulting in different values.
But Bit Gold’s «unchanged difficulty» for deriving valid hash leads to inflation. As hash value increases and computers improve, it will become easier to generate a valid hash and its value will be diluted by an oversupply of valid hashes.
Bit Gold is a typical PoW NFT. But it is not an NFT worthy of collection because it does not solve the core problem of inflation caused by «unchanged difficulty
Representative PoW NFT projects
We investigated exemplary PoW NFT projects available in the market. These NFTs can be divided into two categories: primitive PoW NFTs on non-smart-contract chains, and PoW NFTs on smart-contract-supported chains.
Currently, PoW NFTs that support smart contracts are all only on the Ethereum chain, and PoW NFTs on non-smart-contract chains are only on the Hacash chain.
1 PoW NFT on Ethereum
There are three main PoW NFTs on the Ethereum chain: MooncatRescue(MoonCat), PoW NFT (Atom), and Mineable NFT (Mpunks).
PoW NFT and Mineable NFT are their real names. The group running these two projects might also have realized that PoW NFT was a potential market in its early stage, so they took these names in advance.
MoonCatRescue, also known as MoonCat, is a classic NFT after CryptoPunk. The first MoonCat was born on August 10, 2017. Moon Cat was developed by two creators, collectively known as Ponderware.
Strictly speaking, MoonCat is not a PoW NFT. It uses the CPU mining mechanism for production. You can find a MoonCat in a few seconds or minutes by connecting your Ethereum wallet to the website and searching with a CPU.
This process does not consume too much hash power, because it is just a simple «generating algorithm».
This seemingly simple approach contributes to the birth of PoW NFT: fair distribution, open for everyone to mine, unpredictable style before an NFT is mined.
Therefore, PoW NFT is generative art in the NFT market.
The first PoW NFT project on Ethereum centers on Atom and is named PoW NFT. In order to distinguish this project from the PoW NFT category, we refer to it as Atom in this article.
Similar to Mooncats, Atom can also be produced by connecting the Ethereum wallet to the website and searching Atoms with a CPU. But it takes no longer than just a matter of seconds to minutes to find an Atom because the «mining difficulty» is not fixed.
Theoretically, the total amount of Atom is infinite. But after more than 40,000 Atoms are mined, it will be difficult to produce an Atom. That is, the difficulty of mining will go up with the number of Atoms mined.
In each new cycle, the difficulty will increase by 3 times and the production time will also triple on average. Since there is no upper limit on the number of Atoms, the difficulty will surge in the 14th cycle (starting number #16384), and it would be infinitely difficult to mine an Atom. So the #16384 Atom is technically the last Atom that can be mined.
Besides, the mining cost also doubles in each cycle, and the current cost of mining an Atom is 0. 18ETH. Depending on the configuration of the computer, the average time of producing an Atom varies.
Experiment shows that it takes 1 minute for a laptop to mine the #258 Atom, and 1 hour for the #2048 Atom on average. After in #8192, the average time needed jumps to about 6 hours.
Unlike MoonCat, different Atoms vary in atomic elements and mining difficulty. However, Atom’s mining difficulty does not change continuously, resulting in Atom production being monopolized by miners of large hash power.
Due to the discontinuous mining difficulty, Atom production can become unpredictable and Atom price can fluctuate uncontrollably. At this time, the market is on the verge of collapse.
Mpunks has changed its name to Mineable NFT. Because the group running the project has created two different Mineable projects to increase Mpunks’ liquidity, it uses two names to differentiate the two projects.
Mpunks mainly consist of CryptoPunk.
Theoretically, there can be many CryptoPunks, but Larva Labs limits the number to 10,000. The remaining CryptoPunks in addition to the 10,000 ones, however, can be delivered through mining.
The mining difficulty of Mpunks continues to increase. Like Atom, Mpunks can be monopolized by miners of great hash power.
The fact that every 33 Mpunks mined would result in one Mpunk going to the founder further upsets some Mpunks collectors. Imagine how the Bitcoin miners feel if the community has to give a Bitcoin to Satoshi Nakamoto each time after 33 Bitcoins are mined.
2 PoW NFT on Hacash: Hacash Diamond(HACD)
HACD is short for Hacash Diamond. Each HACD is represented by 6 special letters from the set of letters «WTYUIAHXVMEKBSZN» so that the total amount of HACD is limited to 16 ^ 6 = 16,777,216. And each HACD varies in shape and color.
HACD’s total amount is very large compared to the PoW NFT projects mentioned above, and its mining difficulty also constantly rises like Atom and Mpunks. But the mining difficulty increases smoothly and continuously, allowing miners to accurately estimate the time and hash power needed to mine a HACD.
In terms of a sustainable ecosystem, the number of miners in the HACD community rises at a stable rate.
Most interestingly, after each Hacash Diamond is produced, miners need to bid for the diamond. It should be the first example of miners participating in auctions in the cryptocurrency world.
Compared to other PoW NFTs, this bidding mechanism has four significant benefits:
- The production of HACD per unit time is controllable and has an upper limit.
- While the continuous increase in mining difficulty contributes to stable demand and supply in the long term, the bid mechanism helps dynamically adjust demand-supply conditions in the short term. Note that a higher bid implies a greater demand.
- While the time spent on mining determines the validity of HACDs, bid mechanism determines which HACD is valid at the end of a cycle.
- Transparent bid cost helps collectors evaluate the value of a Hacash Diamond that they are collecting.
PoW NFTs’ Value and Future
The core use case of PoW NFT must be the same as Bitcoin, i. e a store of value. If that is the case, then the three elements that measure good store of value pricing, stored value, and liquidity can also measure a PoW NFT collectible.
The pricing level is referenced by the mining and bid cost, the stored value level is converted from energy, and the liquidity is provided by a certain number of NFTs with similar features.
From MoonCat, Atom, Mpunks, and HACD, we can foresee the great value and potential of PoW NFT in the future.
Even after the white list came out, the majority of the collectors still have problems minting an NFT in the early stage. NFTs mined with the PoW mechanism can solve this problem and ensure fair production of NFTs, because the production mainly depends on the amount of hash power.
However, a continuous increase in mining difficulty and a bidding mechanism is necessary to prevent NFTs from being completely monopolized by miners of large hash power.
Quantity / Scarcity
All NFT projects basically emulate Cypherpunks and limit their NFTs in circulation to specific numbers. Just like many people don’t understand why the number of Bitcoin in circulation is limited to 21M, the number of NFTs needed in circulation is also a mystery.
The NFT issuers have intentionally intervened in the number of NFTs to create scarcity. The PoW mechanism allows the NFT to dynamically adjust its production to meet the market demand in the long run.
When there is a shortage of the PoW NFTs, the miners can stop producing. In addition to this, the bidding mechanism can balance the demand and supply in the short run. Note that a rise in bid implies a greater demand for the NFT.
Art Form: Energy Generative Art
As the NFT technology develops, more advanced NFT art forms have emerged. For example, the small balls of Pak can interactively merge with other small balls into a larger ball.
Therefore, the art form of PoW is by nature generative art, because it is nearly impossible to mine all PoW NFTs at the same time and know the look of all the NFTs in advance. Each PoW NFT is a blind box for miners.
The NFT market can attract great attention through celebrity endorsement and publicity. Though attention can help make a quick profit, it can not help build broad, long-term sustainability, which is necessary for the development of a high-quality collection.
PoW NFT’s production requires certain investments, including electricity and equipment. These absolute costs contribute to a stable NFT price and help buyers evaluate the value of the NFT.
Most NFTs continuously slide down from birth and are short-lived. But PoW NFT does not have the problem of sliding down and perishing quickly. It is more suitable for long-term holding than most profile picture NFTs.
Coupled with the increasing mining difficulty and bid mechanism, PoW NFT’s marginal cost of production can constantly rise in the long run, and it can always dynamically adjust its production to reach supply-demand equilibrium.
These features are conducive to long-term investment by miners and long-term holding by collectors, helping form long-term sustainability. Whether long-term sustainability can be established should be the most important factor to evaluate whether an NFT is worth collecting.
Conclusion
This form is relatively unfamiliar to many NFT collectors, and we expect more people to pay attention to PoW based NFTs. As a representative of PoW based coins, Bitcoin is always topping the market value in the FT market. And the popularity of the PoW based NFT projects introduced above also confirms the prospect of this new track. After all, PoW is currently the most mature consensus mechanism with the highest public approbation. Let’s wait for the next wave of PoW based NFTs.
References
This article is part of The Gaming Metaverse Writing Contest hosted by HackerNoon in partnership with The Sandbox.
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