What does Rarity Score mean?

In simple words, “rarity” is the identification of how rare a certain NFT is in comparison to the other NFTs in its collection. It’s a simple and convenient indicator of the value of NFTs. The lower the number, the more unique the NFT.

Please note that rarity can be calculated in different ways. We believe we’ve created the right formula by taking into account all the nuances, but make sure you understand that this is our subjective evaluation of rarity. Always DYOR (do your own research) and analyze NFT attributes before making any decisions to buy. Our rarity score is just one of the tools to help you in your research process.

Let’s dig deeper and understand how it works.

Most NFTs have attributes that describe them. Let’s see how it works in the TON Diamonds collection for example. All diamonds have unique features: a different background, color, glow, cut, shine, size, and shape. The different combination of these attributes makes a diamond unique.

Some attributes are more unique than others. For instance, there are 600 diamonds of Ocean color, and only 209 diamonds are of Andromeda color. In essence, each attribute affects the rarity of the NFT.

For each attribute, you can calculate its rarity relative to the entire collection. For example, there are 10,000 NFTs in the collection, and only 850 of them are Coral. Therefore, it means that only 8.5% of the collection’s NFTs have the “coral color” attribute. If you calculate the percentage for each NFT attribute and multiply them, you get the total percentage of the rarity of this NFT relative to the entire collection. For each NFT, you get something like this: 0.00000000023676158062% rarity.

Now that we’ve calculated the rarity of each NFT in the collection, we can sort them from the least rare to the rarest ones. We display a rarity score next to the NFT, which is calculated through our formula, where 1 is the rarest NFT in the collection — i.e., so that you don’t have to count large numbers with a bunch of zeros. But once again, this formula is a very subjective method based on our expertise, and we do not suggest that this is the only correct way to define an NFT’s rarity.

Hopefully, there’s more clarity now, and we can dive into the details.

Rarity can be calculated in different ways. For example, many calculate rarity only based on the data that is stored on the blockchain. It happens that an NFT has some attributes in a collection, such as a hypothetical collection with cats, where all the cats in the collection have different types of ears. And some of the NFTs in the collection have no ears, so their metadata does not have a record of this attribute. Basically, there is no indication that this specific attribute of this NFT is a lack of ears — there is simply no data about it. Sometimes, this is done on purpose, sometimes by mistake.

We believe that these nuances are a potentially valuable point when valuing an NFT. The lack of one attribute, which all other NFTs aren’t lacking, is an interesting and valuable feature.

There are occasions when NFTs end up having the same rarity score. For example, they are both super unique, and each of their attributes is unique within the collection. In this case, we will indicate the one that was minted first as the more rare one.