Loot for Adventurers, a collection that isn’t a week old yet, has made splashes among the NFT community. The seemingly simple design is in fact full of utility, or at least collectors have found heaps of value in the bag of characteristics each Loot NFT represents. In this guide, we will take a look at what Loot NFTs are, and why the collection has inspired so many derivative projects in the span of mere days.
What is Loot for Adventurers?
Loot for Adventurers is an NFT collection on the Ethereum blockchain that launched on August 27th. According to the official website, this is a selection of “randomized adventurer gear generated and stored on-chain”. Importantly, all visuals, stats, and power indicators are purposefully omitted. The main goal – give collectors the chance to interpret their NFT in any way they like. Here is an example Loot Bag:
Each Loot NFT represents a bag of characteristics, with a total of 8,000 NFT Loot bags available for primary sale. Each bag has a number, allowing collectors to identify their NFT, and show it off easily. Every single Loot NFT consists of 8 characteristics, each pertaining to the following: chest, foot, hand, head, neck, ring, waist, and weapon. However, interpreting the various combinations is entirely up to the community.
Dom Hofmann, serial entrepreneur and creator of now-defunct video-sharing platform Vine created Loot, and announced it on Twitter on August 27th.
Following this tweet, the NFT community erupted and jumped on the bandwagon pretty fast. All Loot NFT bags were minted in no time, and now secondary markets are enjoying increased activity. The floor price for a Loot bag on OPENSEA has jumped by more than 14 EHT, since the last time we reviewed the project a couple of days ago. It currently sits at almost 20 ETH, or about $78,987.
Interestingly, this creative freedom given to owners and the NFT community, has made the collection stand out. While still part of the general hype around generative art and on-chain NFTs, Loot stands out as an even more liberal project. Each characteristic comes to life in a different way, depending on the person interpreting it. In this sense, Loot is one of the most inspirational NFT projects to ever launch. Here is a quick example – this character generator interprets Loot #6969 in the following way:
However, if you were to build your own character generator, you could visualize each trait completely differently. This alone presents a utility for the NFTs beyond what you perceive when initially looking at the eight-word bag.
Evaluating rarity
Interestingly, because of the huge creative field Loot NFTs leave to the owners, evaluating their rarity becomes a bit tricky
Github now hosts a wide array of rarity evaluation tools, with some standing out. This one, created by bpierre, relies on data analysis and evaluates the bags based on the number of times each trait appears in the whole collection. Based on this method, the rarest Loot NFT bag is #3043, because it has the highest concentration of rare traits.
When put in the evaluator, the result we get for Bag #3043 is clear: 2 legendary traits, 3 mythic traits, 2 epic traits, and a rare trait.
In this sense, the data analysis and purely statistical evaluation approach works. However, with a collection like Loot, data analysis is not everything. NFT collectors have now started identifying specific traits that they are looking for, despite their data-based rarity. In this sense, Loot allows for a very personal take on value and rarity. Not to mention, that with the current hype, even the most common Loot bag will cost a significant amount of ETH for a new buyer.
To make things a bit more official, the Resources page on the Loot website lists this rarity evaluator, which combines data analysis and trait search for anyone interested in it. As you can see, however, there are plenty of tools available to Loot fans when it comes to rarity evaluation.
What are synthetic Loot bags?
As the original Loot collection was minted in a matter of hours, many collectors were left empty-handed. In order to even the scales, and let everyone participate in the Loot hype, Dom Hofmann announced synthetic Loot NFTs.
Synthetic Loot bags allow anyone with an Ethereum wallet to generate their own Loot NFT. Of course, synthetic Loot NFTs are not considered part of the original collection, however, they might allow collectors to participate in Loot Derivative projects. Unfortunately, this depends entirely on the developers of the derivatives, as not all of them recognize synthetic Loot bags as legitimate.
For example, a Twitter user called RoninImperial couldn’t participate in the official mint, but jumped in on creating a synthetic one and got this:
Getting a synthetic Loot bag is a fun way to evaluate the rarity of your wallet’s seed. If you’re lucky you might just get a rather rare combination of traits. Additionally, you can roll as many wallets as you like, and there’s even the speculation that collectors are going to start selling wallets that generate rare synthetic Loot.
You can generate your synthetic Loot bag here. Just paste your wallet address on each of the eight traits and you’ll get your Loot bag combination. You can read up more on synthetic Loot here, in the official Loot Forum, created by Dom Hofmann.
Loot NFTs Derivatives
In the guide so far, we’ve mentioned Loot derivatives a couple of times, and now it’s time to explain why they are such an integral part of the project. The whole idea of the Loot NFT project is to allow further replication and be the foundation for numerous side projects. Considering this, it is no surprise that Loot managed to attract such a big following. It’s becoming the ultimate NFT playground.
Loot Derivatives can be anything from a secondary generative art project, to a play-to-earn game based on the Loot characters. In the span of less than a week, numerous projects are already surfacing. And you know what the best part is – they can be announced in the official Loot Discord channel, and recognized on the Loot Resources page. At the time of writing, Loot has more than twenty derivative projects listed. Each of them has a different use case.
For example, Loot Characters, is a derivative that allows Loot bag holders to create characters based on the traits in their bag. There have already been upwards of 7,772 transactions on this smart contract. A Character NFT returns a second set of 8 traits that combine with your initial Loot bag. For example, this user got the following Loot Character NFT:
As you can see, the design, execution, and general idea of the Loot Characters derivative NFTs is very similar to the original. However, derivative projects can go on forever. And NFT collectors who hold at least one Loot bag (and in some cases a synthetic Loot bag) can participate in all of them. This is where the Loot magic happens. An endless universe of derivative projects all beginning with a single Loot bag NFT.
Let’s review some of the other top grossing Loot derivatives. There is the Extension Loot project. This NFT collection is what it’s name says – an extension pack for Loot. It uses the same algorithm and the same core principle as the original Loot collection. One of the significant differences is that NFT visualizations have a white background, instead of a black one.
The Maps Project takes on Loot’s idea and combines it with waypoint locations. This allows holders to have a place in the world for their Loot bag NFT. The collection was inspired by Loot’s design. However, the Maps Project takes it a step further by simply displaying Maps on every NFT visualization.
Abstract Loot, on the other hand, takes on the idea in a very different aspect, and creates art pieces based on Loot NFT metadata. Again, Loot bags are the foundational element, however, the end result is something completely different. Here are some examples:
Each Abstract Loot has the same number as the metadata of the Loot bag used to create it. In this sense, if you are a Loot bag owner, you can purchase the corresponding artwork, and start building a collection based solely on one initial NFT.
The wave of derivatives will continue to rise, as more builders join the fun. The official Loot discord has a dedicated channel for builders, i.e. developers, where they can share ideas and create collaboratively. An important derivative we are yet to mention is Adventure Gold, so read on.
REUSABLE BLOCK – Loot Characters, Maps Project, Abstract Loot
What is Adventure Gold?
Adventure Gold is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), created by Will Papper, exclusively for Loot bag owners. Papper announced the DAO and the AGLD governance token in a tweet on September 2nd.
According to the tweet, each Loot bag is worth 10,000 AGLD tokens. All bag holders are entitled to these governance tokens. In the thread following the announcement, Papper explains that the goal of the DAO is to set a standard for future derivative projects, and bring some level of organization to the ecosystem.
Importantly, each Loot gives access to a single claim of AGLD tokens. This means that if you bought Loot bags on the secondary market you might not be able to claim AGLD tokens, if the previous owner already did that. However, according to Will Papper, the Adventure Gold DAO is set to decide on Loot seasons, allowing future AGLD drops. This would essentially mean that in the event of a new season, the current Loot bag owner will get the chance to withdraw AGLD, even if someone has already done this in a previous season.
Of course, as a project that’s only been around for less than 48 hours, Adventure Gold still has a long way to go. Even so, the token valuation is out of this world. According to CoinGecko, one AGLD token is worth about $7.50 at the time of writing. However, when first launched, the token price was actually closer to $0.25. You can all do the math and see that this is an enormous gain in the span of mere hours.
Adventure Gold is proof that Loot derivative projects can have very different purposes. This is the perfect example of usability built in an NFT.
Loot NFTs: In summary
Loot for Adventurers has taken the NFT community by surprise. This is also one of the reasons why it is becoming such a huge hit. However, most importantly, this project brings a whole new ideology to the NFT space. With the virtually unlimited possibilities for derivative projects, Loot has set the beginning of a completely new type of NFT ecosystems.
At first glance, Loot NFT bags look like a bunch of words slapped on a black background. However, the underlying level of creativity and freedom are enticing. Especially for people who have been around games like Dungeons and Dragons, or World of Warcraft, where character traits are everything. Not to mention, the endless field of possibilities when it comes to visualizations. Loot NFTs are the perfect example of “less is more”. Eight simple character traits open up a whole universe of possibilities. Considering this vast reach, NFT collectors have jumped at the chance to own at least one Loot bag.
In the process of compiling this report, which took several hours, the floor price for one Loot bag NFT increased by around 4 ETH, or about $15,819. This swift rise is enough to show that interest in the collection is going to continue to rise.
DappRadar will continue monitoring the development of the whole Loot ecosystem, as new derivative collections and dapps are added. Stay tuned, and if you haven’t visited the DappRadar Portfolio and NFT Value Estimator pages, it’s worth it, almost as much as owning a Loot bag.
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