Clam NFT Deep Dive
Greetings, future Clam Island visitors and residents!
The team here at Clam Island has been working hard to ensure that Clam Island can be fully opened to the public as soon as possible. Our community rewards program is also very close to being released. But in the meantime, I’m sure you are all very curious as to how exactly the NFTs will work. That’s why we’re here now — this article is designed to give you some useful insights on our Clam NFTs ahead of their presale. We will talk about Pearl NFTs in a later article.
Before going further, we highly recommend that you read our introduction article and $SHELL presale article (which discusses tokenomics and how $SHELL ties in with Clam NFTs).
Traits and Rarity Overview
By now you should know that one of the main purposes of Clam Island is to produce Clam NFTs. You will probably know (if you have been following our articles) that there are more than 600,000,000 different trait combinations for Clams and about 13,500 Clams minted over the first year of Clam Island’s operation. But those are just vague numbers, impressive as they sound. Well, here are the nitty gritty details that you’ve been waiting for!
The Clam trait combinations come from the following traits:
- 11 different shapes;
- 10 different shell colours;
- 10 different inner colours;
- 10 different lip colours;
- 12 different patterns;
- 5 different tongue shapes;
- 10 different tongue colours
- a size of between 1–100; and
- a lifespan of between 5–15 (this represents the number of Pearls a Clam can produce before it dies).
That’s actually over 6 billion different possible combinations. Phew!
But that’s not all. We mentioned an infinite variety feature, and we are here to deliver. While there are over 6 billion possible combinations, some traits are obviously more common than others. For example, you generally have a 20% chance of getting a white colour from any of the colour traits. Sounds a bit boring maybe, but this actually comes with a particular advantage that we will discuss later in this article.
Our infinite variety solution lies in the fact that we programmatically randomise the shade for a given colour within a certain range. This means that your blue clam will likely not look the same colour as someone else’s blue clam, even though they both have a blue shell colour trait! You are therefore more or less guaranteed to have a unique Clam, no matter what traits you land on.
That said, this many varieties does make determining rarity more difficult. Not to worry — we have done the hard work for you and built in rarity tiers calculated from the probability of any particular fixed trait combination occurring (that is to say, without taking into account the infinite colour variety feature). The tiers, approximate drop rates and average occurrences in the first year, assuming 13,500 clams being minted in that period, are:
+--------------+-----------+------------------+
| Tier | Drop Rate | 1st Year Average |
+--------------+-----------+------------------+
| Common | 71.00% | 9,585 |
+--------------+-----------+------------------+
| Uncommon | 18.00% | 2,430 |
+--------------+-----------+------------------+
| Rare | 8.00% | 1,080 |
+--------------+-----------+------------------+
| Ultra Rare | 2.50% | 338 |
+--------------+-----------+------------------+
| Epic | 0.45% | 61 |
+--------------+-----------+------------------+
| Legendary | 0.05% | 7 |
+--------------+-----------+------------------+As a teaser, here are some Clams randomly generated through our (nearly production ready) generator. The full 3D, rotating renders of each Clam NFT generated will be available for viewing on Clam Island in the Saferoom!
Case of the Maxima
Not all Clams are made equal, and we are not just talking about the traits. Specifically, we wanted to reserve one type of Clam for community rewards and platform engagement. Enter the Maxima Clam:
This Clam cannot be purchased. Instead, there are only two ways to get this Clam:
- One Maxima Clam is randomly dropped every week to a wallet address that was staking in the $GEM pool; and
- From time to time, including in the upcoming Community Rewards Program (details TBA soon), Maxima Clams will be available to be claimed in competitions and other events.
Since the Clam is not purchasable, it is also not redeemable for $SHELL. However, other than being exceedingly rare and serving as a badge of loyalty and engagement with Clam Island, it has several other perks:
- It can be used together with two other Clams of different shapes to boost your yield;
- It can be staked to produce Pearls, and is the only Clam shape that has boosted chances of producing a round Pearl, which is the rarest shape for Pearl NFTs;
- It looks so pretty!
Yes, you read that correctly — some Clam traits, including Clam shape, could have an effect on the traits of the Pearl that it produces! And this is where the boring white-coloured Clams come in. Remember that advantage we talked about? Each white-coloured trait will give you a higher chance of producing a Pearl with a white body colour, which is the rarest body colour. Our aim is to make all the traits as interesting as possible.
Under the hood
For those of you more technically-oriented, we wanted to also give you an idea of how our Clam NFTs work under the hood.
The randomisation of Clam traits is achieved through an on-chain random number oracle. In this case, we are using the BogTools Random Number Generator (RNG). We chose BogTools because it is a home-grown, original and innovative BSC project, just like Clam Island, and despite a relatively small team, they have been delivering an impressive suite of products at warp speed. If you haven’t already, we suggest you check them out!
In any event, once the random number is obtained from the BogTools RNG, it is interpreted into traits for the Clam and uploaded to IPFS. We have deliberately set up the structure in such a way that the traits are recorded immutably on IPFS but the generated images and their corresponding 3D renders can be updated later. This means that the artwork can be upgraded, but the traits, and therefore the rarity of the NFT, cannot be tampered with. In our view this maintains the best compromise between immutability and flexibility.
Since an NFT is a token, each Clam NFT can later be staked into a Clam Farming pool in order to produce Pearls and to boost yields in yield farming pools. As a BEP-721 NFT, Clams are also fully tradable and should be compatible with any standards-compliant NFT marketplaces.
Moving forward
The team is working hard to have Clam NFTs fully ready for the Clam presale by the tentative date of June 18. There are also many things happening in the background, some of which we can’t yet share — suffice it to say that our pipeline is going to be full for some time!
In the immediate short term before the Clam presale, we have the upcoming $SHELL token unlock vote and the Community Rewards Program.
Our smart contract for the vote has already been created, and the voting on Clam Island will open very soon. We will announce it as soon as it is ready and $SHELL holders will have 72 hours to vote.
Details on the Community Rewards Program will also be released very soon, with the program almost immediately kicking off. Stay tuned!
As always, please follow our Twitter, Telegram and Discord for the latest updates.
