NFT Rarity explained

You’ve just purchased a NFT from a trendy NFT Collection & you would like to know its rarity. You’d like to find a gold nugget at a low price with all infos in hand. So let’s answer the following question: what makes the rarity of a NFT?

1. Common or rare attributes of NFT
2. Frequent attributes of a NFT
3. Combos of attributes that make a NFT rare
4. How to verify the rarity of a NFT ?
   

Let’s take the case of Avatars collections. Thousand of NFTs are usually generated automatically. Indeed, tens of attributes or traits in English are randomly shuffled by an algorithm create these uniques avatars.

Ex: NFT Collection The Powder Room

Some attributes are therefore present much more often than others, so thus making it possible to establish an order of rarity of the NFTs.

First, one must know that the creators of the smart contract used to mint a NFT Collection do have the option of predefining the rarity of each attribute used. Therefore, similar attributes can be found in many NFT Collections such as backgrounds, eyes, lasers in the eyes, skin, nose, body, mouth, hair or others.

A gold nugget NFT is therefore usually super rare compared to the rest of its collection but that shouldn’t be enough to convince you as the creators could very well have decided to make this trait common.ore, similar attributes can be found in many NFT Collections such as backgrounds, eyes, lasers in the eyes, skin, nose, body, mouth, hair or others.

An important point to take in account is the mix of attributes that a NFT holds. Indeed, some traits blend better than others, whether visually or just by making more sense.

For example, if a collection holds an attribute of “ape fur” very rare together with a rare “ape mouth with a gold teeth”, the presence of both on the same Avatar could be extremely rare.

That sometimes brings NFTs with no exceptional attributes to become very rare through a combo of several uncommon attributes.
Also, the aesthetic appearance should also be taken in account in the combos of attributes. Even if these combos are not rare, the mix of common attributes considered as “visually nice” also do bring rarity to a NFT.

Sometimes, the rarity of an NFT comes simply from the enthusiasm around its aesthetics, leading owners to refuse the sale of their avatar.
The simple principle of supply & demand can then drive up the price of NFTs that don’t have, at first glance, any rare attributes.