NFT creator Pak is a well-known digital artist who prefers to remain completely anonymous. Pak rose to prominence after his historic Merge NFT drop on Nifty Gateway, and eventually became the artist with the most expensive NFT ever sold.
Pak has built a fanbase solely on his NFT creations, which are generative, interactive, and impressive above all. No wonder Merge NFT has crossed over $90 million in just 48 hours and become the largest NFT sale ever for any living artist.
Well, there must be so many questions in your head after reading this, and you are not wrong to think so. Let’s walk through how Merge NFT developed, came into trend, and is still evolving with each passing day.
Pak’s Merge NFT Project
The Merge NFT project has a layered mechanism with numerous possibilities. It’s an interactive programmable NFT collection in which the NFTs’ characteristics keep on changing with the number of interactions.
To understand what this means, you must first understand that the Merge NFT project was an open edition, which translates to “unlimited edition”. This manner, anyone can buy as many NFTs as they like because there is an endless supply, but time is of the essence here. Although the supply of NFTs is limitless, they must be purchased within a specific time window.
In the Merge NFT project, the sale lasted for 48 hours (from December 2 through December 4) in which a total of 312,686 NFTs (units of mass) were sold to 28,984 unique buyers. The numbers speak for themselves; Pak has unquestionably broken every record ever set in the realm of NFTs.
As a result, it has become the single-largest sale by a living artist, a record that remains unbroken because it has set a high benchmark for anyone who wishes to surpass it. Over $91.8 million was raised for the Merge NFT project. The Merge NFT drop happened for the first time on Nifty Gateway, but is now available on other marketplaces as well. If you’re wondering where else you can buy Merge NFT except Nifty Gateway, here’s the answer: Makersplace and Opensea.
Mechanism of Merge NFT project
The mechanism of the Merge NFT project is unconventional but worth the efforts, we’ll tell you why. Merge NFT project consists of mass units represented as NFTs. Under this, each mass is an NFT and is of a different value.
Suppose you have mass(m) 1 in your wallet address, while the other person has mass(m) 4. If you choose to transfer mass 1 to him, both masses will automatically merge to form a new mass that is the sum of both masses, which is mass(m) 5 in this case.
m(1) + m(4) = m(5)
As more merges occur, the number of mass tokens decreases. There can’t be more than one mass NFT in a wallet because it’s programmed to merge immediately, leaving just one mass token per wallet. If you have m(5), you have to sell that entire m(5). You cannot sell m(1) and retain m(4).
These masses are not mere jpegs but dynamic on-chain NFTs based on the total mass of the NFT. Furthermore, the more mass you accumulate, the NFT will visually grow bigger. There are no hosted images and all visuals are generated on the chain.
During the sale, many collectors can get even more mass than they have accumulated as a bonus. The concept is if you collect mass, you will get more mass. The more mass you accumulate, the higher your bonus percent will be.
For every 10N mass acquired, the collector gets N/10 extra.
Merge is a single NFT, whose pieces are scattered as mass. So when you merge masses you somehow gather these scattered pieces(mass). Understand it like this, the whole community is trying to put the puzzle together. The puzzle is Merge NFT and the pieces which need to be put together are mass tokens.
As per Pak, Merge is a single artwork distributed across many tokens, and not just a collection of artworks.
Real motive behind the Merge NFT drop
The purpose of the merge project was to attract new collectors. Pak wanted to show everyone that NFTs are more than “just jpegs”.
Accordingly, he created the Merge project, in which NFTs are altered based on the number of users. “Mass is gravity, Mass is energy”, is what Pak wrote on mass.black. Everything will soon be dark as described on the website, and mass.black is a one-of-a-kind treasure hunt.
Unique 1/1 edition
Pak did mention that Merge can theoretically become a 1/1 over time. A single collector can collect all of the other m tokens and combine them into a single NFT.
The overall token count will be reduced to one, but the total mass will stay the same. However, he did state that this is not socially possible.
Merge NFT is the True Burn!!
In the merge process, the smaller mass gets destroyed and the bigger mass survives to become the addition of both bigger and smaller masses. The process is called “True Burn”.
It’s the mechanism for reducing the number of mass NFTs present in the collection. The token supply decreases as more mass tokens are merged. Basically, Merge collection works on a built-in scarcity mechanism which we refer to as True Burn.
True Burn is completely different from the burn mechanism in which NFTs are sent to 0xdead. However, in the true burn, they are sent to 0x0 and removed from the contract when merged.
How did the pricing mechanism for merge work?
Initially when the sale started on 2nd Dec at 6:00 pm ET, it was priced at just $299 for an early access, but at 6:30 pm ET when the public access began it hiked to $400, and then kept on increasing $25 for every 6 hours till the end of the sale.
Since the sale lasted for 48 hours, on the last day of sale on 4th December the pricing again hiked to $575.
How Leaderboards are made
To top the leaderboard, you must do the maximum number of merges or accumulate mass with the highest value. Yet, the question is how collectors are supposed to know how many merges they bought. The naming convention of the NFT has the answer to all your questions.
Mass NFTs are named as m(# of mass acquired) #rank – meaning that ‘m(1430) #25’ has 1430 mass and is ranked #25 on the leaderboard.
During the sale period, you can follow the total amount of mass acquired by all collectors, but you will not be able to know who is leading. Some leading collectors of this hidden leaderboard will be rewarded with style classes.
The Top 100 and Top 5 of the leaderboard will get special permanent classes. In addition, a total of 50 tokens will be chosen at random to be included in a special permanent class. There are a total of 100 such classes distributed evenly among all tokens.
“Alpha” is the most popular and sought-after class among other special classes. If you’re imagining what the Alpha class is, here’s what it is:
Under this, the system’s largest mass “alpha” is a dynamic class that will be awarded to the top collector. Collectors can compete to secure the “alpha” class by acquiring more mass from the secondary market.
To identify the Top 100, Top 5, random 50, and alpha, there is a color coding discussed below:
- The top 100 are yellow-colored mass
- The top 5 are red-colored mass
- Random 50 will appear as a blue-colored mass
- Alpha is black coloured mass
The black colored mass Alpha, is the system’s greatest mass and a dynamic class that is given to the top collector, but it could also be obtained on the secondary market by competing for extra mass.
Pak just revealed a new layer to the Merge NFT project, in which collectors will receive “matter tokens” for the number of merges completed and the total mass accumulated. If you are an avid Pak’s NFT collector, it’s time to do some merges.
You must meet specific requirements in order to participate in the ongoing treasure hunt for “matter” tokens. The treasure hunt event will last until April 30th, 2022.
Also, all the NFT drops that have been introduced on mass.black support the burn mechanism. You can anytime burn the mass NFTs to get $ASH or you can keep on merging to be rewarded “matter” tokens. As “matter” tokens are part of the mass.black event, they can also be burned to get $ASH.
Future of “Merge”
With the ongoing treasure hunt for matter tokens on mass.black, Pak NFT collectors have been showing overwhelming participation. It is expected that in future “m” token holders will also be part of something bigger than this.
Merge is no longer an NFT project, but rather a community that is gradually merging mass and manifesting matter to create Pak’s NFT universe in the actual world.
