If you’ve been paying attention to cryptocurrency and non-fungible token (NFT) news, then you’ve probably heard about the Solana blockchain and its native cryptocurrency SOL.
Solana is an alternative blockchain that supports smart contracts and boasts lightning-fast speeds and cheap transactions fees, and it has quickly risen to become a competitive blockchain to Ethereum in the NFT space.
Now, many NFT collectors are buying, selling, and investing in Solana NFTs, and Solana doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon.
If you’re interested in collecting Solana NFTs, one of the most important things to understand is how to check your NFT’s rarity. Rarity is a critical factor to determine the value of an NFT, and for NFT fans, collectors, and investors, learning about rarity and rarity checking tools is an essential skill.
In this article, we’ll look at the history of Solana and some of the top Solana NFT projects. Then we’ll explain why rarity is so important to NFTs and how you can use some of the tools available to check the rarity of a Solana NFT.
What is Solana?
Solana is an alternative blockchain and cryptocurrency (SOL) that published its white paper in November of 2017. Since then, it has risen to become the 7th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, led by a 400% surge of SOL in the summer of 2021.
An open-sourced blockchain platform designed to host scalable, secure, decentralized applications, Solana fits all the requirements for NFTs and has some major benefits over its biggest competitor in the NFT space, Ethereum.
One of those benefits is its lightning-fast transaction speeds. Theoretically, the Solana network can process 710,000 Transactions Per Second (TPS) on a standard gigabit network. To put that in perspective, Visa’s network can currently handle around 65,000 TPS and Ethereum has struggled to scale beyond 15 TPS.
The reason Solana is so much faster than other blockchains is that it uses a Proof of Stake combined with a Proof of History (PoH) consensus mechanism. This allows nodes — the different computers verifying transactions on the blockchain— to timestamp their blocks to verify and order the passage of time between events, greatly increasing the speed at which blocks are verified.
Another huge benefit of Solana, and one that is appreciated by NFT collectors, is it has very low transaction fees. By December 2021, Solana had processed over 40 billion transactions with an average cost per transaction of only $0.00025. Ethereum, on the other hand, currently has “gas fees” of around $50 per transaction and it has been much higher.
Solana’s low fees combined with its speed and potential for scalability have made it an attractive option for NFT collectors. Currently, there are several Solana NFT projects with floor prices in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Top Solana NFT Projects
Ethereum may be the OG home of NFT projects, but Solana is making moves to a be a close second. Earlier this month, the most popular secondary market for NFTs, OpenSea, added several Solana NFT collections to their marketplace. Unsurprisingly, this boosted the floor price of the selected collections and brought exposure to a new audience to Solana NFTs.
Some of the most successful generative Solana NFT collections and their lowest current price (floor price) on OpenSea include:
- Degenerate Ape Academy. A 10,000 piece generative collection founded on the principles of “friendship making, crayon eating” and other “degenerate behavior.” Floor price: 84 SOL.
- Solana Monkey Business. A 5,000-piece collection of pixel monkeys generated from 99 possible traits spread over 6 layers, ownerships grants access to MonkeDAO and other perks. Floor price: 240 SOL.
- Boryoku Dragons. A collection of 1,111 Dragon NFTs backed by a team of designers, NFT collectors, artists, and builders. Floor price: 300 SOL.
- Degods. This deflationary collection of 10,000 degenerates, punks, and misfits gives holders the ability to mine DUST, the collection’s native cryptocurrency. Floor price: 250 SOL.
Some other Solana projects that have enjoyed success but have slightly lower floor prices include:
1. Aurory
2. SolPunks
3. Mindfolk
4. Stoned Ape Crew
5. The Catalina Whale Mixer
6. Cets on Creck
7. Solgods
8. Tombstone Society
9. The Remnants
10. Pesky Penguins
Collecting Solana NFTs is a great way for beginners to get started in the non-fungible token space because of the extremely low gas fees you pay for minting. However, if you’re considering minting a Solana NFT it’s important to understand how rarity works and to always check the rarity of an NFT before you buy or sell.
Understanding How Rarity Works with NFTs
Rarity is one of the most important aspects of any generative NFT collection and knowing an NFT’s rarity score and rarity rank is critical for all NFT investors.
Like with any type of non-fungible collectible, from trading cards to wine, how rare or scarce an item plays a key role in shaping its value. Rarity in NFTs is similar but slightly more complicated.
First, NFTs are unique digital assets stored on blockchains like Solana, and each NFT within a collection is one-of-a-kind. That means that every NFT is rare in itself because no other like it exists.
But that’s just the first layer. Each NFT in a generative NFT collection also has a combination of traits and attributes that are unique and appear in varying frequency throughout the collection.
When it comes to profile picture avatar NFTs, traits often consist of things like Accessories, Headwear, Mouth, Eyes, Facial Hair, Clothing, Body, and Background. And the attributes for one of the traits like Headwear could be Top Hat, Fedora, Sombrero, Baseball Cap, and No Hat.
Most commonly, NFT collections have between 6-8 traits, and from those traits, thousands of possibilities can be generated. The rarity of an NFT within a collection is determined by the traits and attributes it possesses and common or uncommon they are.
How to Calculate Rarity
Looking at specific examples from an NFT collection is one of the best ways to understand how rarity functions.
Solana Monkey Business is a collection of 5,000 NFTs generated from 99 possible traits spread over six layers. Below is NFT #1672 — ranked 10th overall in the collection.
Here is the rarity chart for Solana Monkey Business NFT #1672:
| TYPE | VALUE | SCORE | OCCURRENCES |
| Clothes | Diamond | 357.14 | 7 (0.14%) |
| Hat | Orange Backwards Cap | 16.67 | 150 (3%) |
| Type | Orange | 13.23 | 945 (18.90%) |
| Attributes Count | Two | 1.09 | 2298 (45.96%) |
| Eyes | None | 0.70 | 3576 (71.52%) |
| Mouth | None | 0.68 | 3682 (73.64%) |
| Ears | None | 0.64 | 3904 (78.08%) |
As you can see in the chart, the NFTs’ rarest trait is its Clothes — Diamond. The Diamond clothes trait only occurs seven times in the entire collection or 0.14% of the time. Its second most rare trait is its Hat, the Orange Backwards Cap, which occurs 150 times in the collection, or 3% of the time.
In this chart from Rarity Sniper, each trait is given a score according to its rarity. The rarer the trait, the higher the score. Then that number is added up to produce a rarity score. The final rarity score is compared to others in the collection to determine the NFT’s rarity ranking.
Although the concept of rarity is relatively simple, calculating rarity in a 10,000-piece generative NFT collection is anything but. The good news is that you don’t have to come up with your own system of ranking NFTs. NFT collections and rarity checking tools like Rarity Sniper rank hundreds of collections, which you can use to determine the rarity of Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon NFTs.
Understanding how traits and attributes affect NFT is vital to anyone who wants to collect digital assets, and you should always use a rarity checking tool before buying or selling NFTs on secondary marketplaces like OpenSea or Rarible.
Using Rarity Checking Tools
There are several ways to determine a non-fungible token’s rarity, but we think Rarity Sniper’s rarity checking tool is the simplest to use and yields the most accurate (albeit we are a little biased).
To check the rarity of a Solana NFT, you can search by collections, drop date, floor price, total volume, or blockchain. To find a Solana NFT, first choose the blockchain filter and click Solana. This will narrow the results down to only Solana collections listed on Rarity Sniper.
Once you find the Solana NFT collection you’re looking for, you can check the NFT by entering your NFT ID number. This will pull up your NFT and give you a rarity chart and ranking like the one shown above. You can also filter collections by their traits or ranking to determine the rarity of NFTs.
Finally, Rarity Sniper allows you to check the rarity rankings of Solana and Ethereum NFTs in the Rarity Sniper Discord channel.
Getting to know rarity tools is critical for NFT collectors, minters, snipers, and investors to calculate a fair selling price. It can help avoid mistakes like selling an extremely rare NFT for a low price or overpaying for an NFT that is actually very common.
Conclusion
The rarity of NFTs is the reason why some Solana-based NFTs sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars and others, even from the same collection, for significantly less. And for NFT collectors and enthusiasts, adding rare NFTs to their collections is a top priority.
If you’re considering investing in Solana NFTs, getting familiar with rarity checking tools is a must. It’s also important to stay on top of NFT news and learn as much about Solana rarity and NFTs as possible.
For daily NFT news, follow us at Rarity Sniper News.