At the moment we’re seeing an increased interest in the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) sector for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there’s increased interest in well-known digital collections like CryptoPunks and NBA Top Shots. Amidst this increased hype, there’s space for newer products to attract an audience. Among those new products is Hashmasks.
Hashmasks is a relatively new digital collection that was launched at the end of January 2021. Even though the NFT collection is new, it’s already responsible for more than $26 million in sales. Individual masks regularly sell for more than $100.000, and some of them even surpassed $600,000.
Source: Google Trends
The valuation of such a new product is quite complicated. Within this overview, we will analyze an item’s importance, eye and skin color, mask, and character. Also, we take the implicit rarity and Name Changing Token (NCT) into consideration.
Table of contents
- $26 million in sales and counting
- The Value of Holding an Item
- Unique Masks are Booming
- From Mystical Eyes to Dark Ones
- Skin or no skin
- The importance of Character
- The discovery of Implicit Rarity
- Creating uniqueness with the Name Changing Token (NCT)
- The road ahead
$26 million in sales and counting
Hashmasks is a living digital art collectible created by over 70 artists globally. It is a collection of 16,384 unique digital portraits. Within more than two weeks, the collectibles generated impressive sales of more than $26 million.
It could be argued that the collection might be still undervalued. During the initial distribution, the cheapest Hashmasks were sold for 0.1 ETH ($182). While the current floor price is almost twenty times higher at 1.98 ETH ($3,607) according to OpenSea.
Source: Cryptoslam
The floor price is not the only element proving a potential growth in collectibles value. Recently twelve sales of more than $100,000 have been made, which varied from $100,000 to $640,000 per item.
Source: Cryptoslam
Similarly to other collections, each of these artworks is uniquely designed to be part digital art and part digital collectible. They are all designed to possess five basic characteristics: eye color, mask, skin color, character, and an item. Although every card possesses these characteristics, they all have varying degrees of rarity, which makes them truly unique.
The Value of Holding an Item
At the very beginning, the item seemed to be the most important attribute of the Hashmask. There are 6 different types of items: toilet paper, book, mirror, shadow monkey, and golden toilet paper. However, the majority of the Hashmasks characters don’t hold any items.
When looking at the items and the pricing of the Hashmasks, the most expensive ones are the most unique ones. Those are the characters holding Golden Toilet Paper.
Although an item plays an important role while valuing Hashmasks, it is not the key element. For instance, six out of the twelve biggest Hashmasks sales didn’t include an item. Hashmask 9939 has a unique mask and mystical skin and eyes, and it sold for $640,000.
Unique Masks Are Booming
Without any doubt, masks play an important role in Hashmask’s value. Especially when we talk about the rarest ones. There are 15 types of masks, the rarest ones are the one unmasked and the ten unique masks. After that, the next most unique mask type is steampunk, with 229 versions. There’s a considerable price difference here, as the average sale of a unique Hashmask is more than $390,000, while a steampunk mask sells for approximately $8,600.
From Mystical Eyes to Dark Ones
Eye color is another important element that adds additional uniqueness to the collection. There are eight types of eye color from mystical (12) to dark eyes (7419). Three out of the twelve biggest Hashmasks sales had the mystical eyes attribute.
Interestingly, although freak eyes are less common than painted eyes, the latter average sales are 30% higher at around $7,700 per item.
Skin or no skin
Another key element is the skin type. of which there are 10 different ones. Transparent skin is the rarest one, only two Hashmasks have that attribute. Grey skin is commonly met in the Hashmasks collection. Between these two extremes, the average sales price ranges from $500.000 for transparent skins to $2800 for grey and light skins.
Interestingly, golden skin sales are two times higher than freak skin while the latter is rarer. It proves that Hashmasks should be assessed comprehensively and the valuation by the single attribute could be misleading.
The Importance of Character
The last and not the least important aspect of a Hashmasks is the character itself. In total there are 6 types of characters. Mystical is the rarest, selling for an average of $215.000, while a male is the most common one with an average price tag of $3100.
Different from other attributes, character price increases together with the rarity of the NFTs. This suggests that the character is the number one attribute that is taken into consideration while purchasing the NFT.
Combining attributes
Value is not determined by one attribute alone, but the combination of different attributes can create rarity on its own. For example, a female holding regular toilet paper is a rare combination that’s only found 8 times, while 43 female Hashmasks are holding golden toilet paper. Men holding normal toilet paper isn’t that special, as those makeup for a total of 276 versions. Therefore the discovery of value is still an on-going process.
Source: thehashmasks.com
Although the different attributes play an important role in value, the value concept is changing. There are implicit rarity elements that are discussed within the blockchain community that might impact value switching to other elements within these NFTs.
The Discovery of Implicit Rarity
The Hashmask collection is unique in the way it involves the users in the creation process. While the creators provide a set of explicit characteristics with differing degrees of rarity, e.g. men are much more common than robots. Unlike other collectibles, there is a second layer of scarcity imposed on top of the explicit traits via the implicit traits.
For instance, the two relatively similar Hashmasks can still feature many different visual elements. The first one has the bottle which gives uniqueness to the Hashmask. While the second one holds a phoenix which is barely met in other Hashmasks. Phoenix is a so-called second layer element within the collection.
Source: Twitter post
The implicit rarity helps in creating an additional layer of value. The users interact with them while looking for hidden messages or attributes. Together it helps users to create the stories around the NFTs and stay involved within the collection for the longer period of time. In addition these second layer elements can form the basis for new definitions of rarity, shifting the balance within the Hashmasks economy.
Name Changing Token (NCT)
The final element is the Name Changing Token (NCT). The token was designed to be an additional tool for users to participate in the collection’s creation. The NCT serves only one single purpose: it allows its holder to give their Hashmasks collectible an unique name that’s permanently stored and publicly visible on the Ethereum blockchain. The token gives the users the opportunity to give each Hashmask its most unique trait – their name.
While NCT gives another benefit to Hashmasks holders. As an ERC-20 token, it has a certain value. The current value of the token is close to $0.2 which gives an opportunity to the passive income for Hashmasks holders.
Source: Coingecko
Theoretically, although NCT token has a predefined purpose, overall the concept is similar to elements seen in DeFi dapps, like token farming.
The road ahead
While Hashmasks is one of the newest NFT collections in the blockchain world, it has already attracted some of the biggest sales in the history of NFTs. There are five attributes that create the first layer of value. These seem to define the biggest price differences in the collection.
However, different from most other collections, Hashmasks have implicit rarity elements. The search for these layers attracts collectors and puzzle fanatics, and in the process these layers change the value concept. It’s in the line of expectations that the concepts behind the value of Hashmasks will shift in the future as the mysteries surrounding them are uncovered by its community.
