About

CryptoFrens is a collection of 10,000 Apu NFTs on the Avalanche Network. The collection has been built from the ground up. Everything from the backend to generative code is written from scratch to create a collection with great variety. Each of the NFTs are guaranteed to be unique, and the each pixel of each trait is crafted with passion. The NFT contract and all of its contents are provably immutable. With this collection, we aim to make NFTs great again. Like our artistic and technical dedication? Come on then, make some new frens!

Want to know more? Keep on reading!

Contents

  1. art
  2. rarity
  3. immutability
  4. team
  5. external links

Art

CryptoFrens is the most varied algorithmic NFT character collection ever. Frens are drawn onto 96x96 canvases. This allows frens to portray a greater range of emotions and variety than smaller pixel arts, and have more “soul” (i.e., artistic character) than high-definition NFTs, most of which look as if they are mass-produced in a factory. All of the frens, that is, the traits that compose them, have been drawn by us, the team, from scratch, for the sole purpose of this project. There are well over 350 traits and ten trillion possible combinations of frens. All 10,000 frens are guaranteed to be unique. Most frens are cute, some are goofy, and some are grotesque. Nonetheless, each fren is lovable in its own unique way.

Rarity

All 10,000 frens are equally rare, because there is only one of each. Therefore, people who want to put rarity labels to the NFTs must look at the rarity of the each trait composing a single NFT. However, even if we consider that all traits are equal except their occurence count, defining how a certain combination of traits make the NFT rarer is subjective. Is an NFT that only has common traits except a rarest hat more rare than an NFT with all slightly rare traits? The CryptoFrens generative code makes this all more complex. Our generative code is more sophisticated than other NFT projects, and it has rules for handling overlaps, increasing the chance of related traits occuring together, multi-slot traits, etc. For example, if a fren has Chef's Uniform, it is more likely to also have Chef's Hat. Or, if a fren has glasses, it cannot have most of the hats that covers brow. On top of that, some traits, such as Business Suits, are part of collection of traits that have slight variations (e.g., colour). So even if one of the traits might be rare, the collection is not. Do we consider that trait as rare or not? The answer is, of course, that it is subjective. For all these reasons, as the developers, we do not want to dictate what is rare and what is not. We want to let the community assign value to each NFT, based not only on the rarity of its traits, but also based on the artistic appeal of the NFTs. With all that being said, after the NFT distribution is complete, we will publish the trait and pair counts for statistical purposes.

Immutability

Immutable means unchanging. An immutable non-fungible token (NFT) must not change from the moment you mint to the end of blockchain's life. This means an immutable NFT must always represent the same object. This should be a core property of NFT artworks. Just like the painter of a painting you own should not be able to barge into your home and repaint or smear the artwork you hanged on your wall, the NFT creator should have no power to change or destroy an NFT after it came to your posession. Unfortunately, almost all current NFT projects lack this basic immutability property. This is a non-trivial issue that is overlooked by most NFT enthusiasts. Even if the NFT creator might be incentivized to not tamper with the NFTs after they are sold, it is undeniable that mutable NFTs bring “trust” to NFT ownership. What is the purpose of owning an artwork on a trustless ledger (i.e., blockchain) if you have to trust the creator of the artwork to not tamper with the art you bought? So, how are most NFTs mutable?

NFTs can be mutable through three ways: (1) changing the token URI (i.e., metadata URI) itself, (2) changing the contents of the token URI, or (3) changing the contents of external URIs in the metadata (e.g., image URI). Most collectibe ERC-721 NFTs are defined by their tokenURI read-function. This function returns the URI of the NFT's metadata. The metadata is a plain text file that stores all the information about the NFT, such as its name, description, and it's image URI. Therefore, only a single link to NFTs metadata is defined on the blockchain, and everything else about the NFT is stored off chain.

(1) Most NFTs have a setBaseURI write-function. This allows the NFT contract owner (i.e., the creator of the collection, not the owner of individual NFTs) to easily change the string returned by the tokenURI read-function, essentially changing the collection all together.

CryptoFrens NFT contract is not ownable, and it lacks a setBaseURI write-function.

(2) Most NFTs link their metadata as HTTP URIs. HTTP was not designed with immutability in mind, therefore the content of each HTTP URI can be freely changed by the server owner. For immutable NFTs, metadata should be linked as an IPFS URI. IPFS URIs have the hash of the file they identify in their URI scheme, therefore an IPFS URI always points to the same file. Also a file linked with an IPFS URI can be decentrally recovered, which makes it resistant to censorship. IPFS is essential for persistence too. Because it allows anyone interested in the project to host its files to ensure that the links never die. Some NFT projects claim that they host with IPFS, however they instead use HTTP gateways of certain IPFS services. HTTP gateways still rely on centralized servers, therefore they should not be used for token URI. Only proper IPFS URIs (i.e., ipfs://CONTENT_ID) must be used for linking NFT metadata and images.

CryptoFrens metadata and images are linked with IPFS URIs, hence they are immutable.

(3) The same points for metadata URI also apply for the image URI. IPFS must be used when linking images for immutable NFTs.

With our attention to elegant and robust design, we made CryptoFrens immutable. The contract creator is on equal grounds as any other address on the blockchain. Contract creator cannot change the token URIs. Both the metadata and image URIs link to IPFS, ensuring immutability of NFTs' contents. Anyone can download all the images and metadata in the collection, and host them on their IPFS node to ensure persistence of the IPFS URIs. We hope that future NFT projects on Avalanche will also stay true to the spirit of the blockchains and pay similar attention to trustless and immutable design.

Team

henlo frens i am shung i am a long time mongolian basketweaving forum lurker and a rare pepe kollektour i have a kollection of one million apus and love all of them i normali write kode for miself and i wrote all the kode for dis project i asked mi mami and mi papi to help with art we did art together i showed them my whole pepe collekshun including poo poo pee pee so they understand pepe kultur i asked mi mami to draw hitler she refused she drew red army guy i asked mi papi to draw an isis guy he refused he drew a crusader i stopped giving their wages mi mami stopped making mi veggie tendies wi are still the bestest team and this project would not be gut without the help of mi help helpers

The CryptoFrens Team

From left to right: Mi papi, mi, mi mami.

Socials

Contracts

Marketplaces

IPFS

You can go to Discord and ask for instructions how to download all the metadata and images using command line.