We're excited to share our involvement with OpenRarity, a seriously ambitious project we've been working on with OpenSea, PROOF, and Curio. OpenRarity is an open-source, completely objective, and fully reproducible protocol that aims to provide unified and transparent rarity rankings across all platforms. More transparency means more trust and a better user experience — making NFTs more accessible and more enjoyable for more people.
icy.tools and OpenRarity
Why was OpenRarity created?
Seasoned NFT buyers, sellers, and traders are all too familiar with rarity discrepancies between publishers (tools, marketplaces, alpha groups, project sites, etc.). And while some of the more savvy NFT folks know how to maneuver through the murky waters of rarity and rankings, many more buyers and sellers end up misled and confused. The more time the team behind OpenRarity spent researching the current rarity landscape, the more issues we identified. For more information about what is currently lacking from rarity rankings and the methodology behind the solution, check out the Mirror article from the OpenRarity team.
Why did icy.tools get involved?
Our goal has always been to make NFTs and Web3 more accessible. Creating a transparent, unified ranking system is a step toward bringing more trust to our industry and making it easier to access. We are strong believers in the theory that a rising tide lifts all boats. And while we don't have a specific vested interest in any one collection or marketplace, we are intrinsically connected to them all.
"Consensus and transparency are fundamental to the blockchain and Web3, and so we think there's an opportunity to create a verifiable, consistent, and mathematically-grounded methodology for producing rarity ranks that can build more trust in the space in the long-term."
-OpenRarity Team
icy.tools + OpenRarity on Collections
As an icy user, you've probably noticed that many other analytics platforms provide rarity rankings while we do not — until now 😉. A key element of the icy.tools ethos has always been to provide the most transparent, accurate, and objective data possible. That's why we pull all of our current, real-time data directly from the Ethereum Blockchain and never compromise with third-party APIs. We took a similar stance on rarity rankings. It would be easy to plug in a rarity API and call it a day, but that didn't sit right with us. We've all heard stories about people getting burned while trying to trade NFTs on rarity. So we couldn't provide data to our users in good conscience unless it was objectively verifiable. That's why we feel so strongly about the principles and methodology of OpenRarity.
"The core tenets of the OpenRarity methodology are:
It must be easy for creators, consumers, and developers to understand
It must be objective and grounded in mathematical principles (open-source, introspectable)
It must be easy to recalculate as the dataset changes (new mints, metadata typos, mutable attributes)
It must provide consistent rarity ranks across all publishers"
How we plan to incorporate OpenRarity rankings on icy.tools
Starting immediately, we will surface rarity rankings for a handful of collections that worked with OpenRarity to ensure they met the standards of the methodology.
These collections are:
Going forward, icy.tools will support and display data for collections that use the OpenRarity system.
The future of OpenRarity
This current iteration of OpenRarity is just the first step. There is no doubt that new features and improvements will be introduced as the rollout progresses. In fact, we know a few exciting additions that are already in the works 😁.
(icy.tools and the other creators of OpenRarity) "...also understand the significance of uniformity, transparency, and reproducibility for the long-term viability of the rarity landscape. Our goal is to provide a new, durable approach to rarity rankings that will stand the test of time. We're still early, and we hope that OpenRarity will become the standard for creators and developers who value objective and transparent rarity calculations. Creators and developers alike will have a choice to adopt OpenRarity — the control is fully in your hands."
About OpenRarity
OpenRarity is an open collaboration between Curio, icy.tools (QuickNode), OpenSea, PROOF and has been vetted with creator teams representing several top-100 collections by volume. We're excited to expand this group going forward. If you're interested in becoming a contributor or a launch partner, drop a line on our GitHub discussions page.