019 - le Crucible

The byteGANS are restless and have begun to mutate in le Crucible.

But why and how is it even possible?

In short, common byteGANs are being absorbed into le Crucible where they cook for a bit, merge with others, and come out as a rarer new hybrid.

In this first round radiating skull/octo/cyberGANs are becoming mutated cycloGANs.

cycloGANs are a new kind of byteGAN that was accidentally created when several irradiated byteGANs reached critical mass in le Crucible. A third skull, third octo, and third cyber, they are a cross between man, machine, and cephalopod. Some consider the cephaloGODs, but they are limited by their humanity and mechanical determinism. They have just appeared so we are still learning more about them, but look forward to discovering the new mysteries they reveal.

More rounds are coming which will include new subtypes. These future rounds will be announced with plenty of notice and opportunity for many collectors to get an upgrade, with preference to owners of multiple byteGANs. And also DO NOT WORRY that these will dilute the rarity of your byteGANs if you hold UltraRares or Uniques. If you think about collections in terms of Common, Rare, and UltraRare, le Crucible will only be upgrading byteGANs from Common types to Rare types and in very limited quantities.

We are all surprised by this event and some are saying they thought byteGANs were 100% on-chain and immutable. To quickly answer but get into more details later, they ARE 100% On-Chain and they will dance there forever, but I as the artist can change the form and dance up until the point I burn the contract. And I will burn the contract, but not until le Crucible is complete.

How many upgrades should we expect. Well to repeat, the UltraRare are safe as le Crucible will only ever upgrade Commons to Rares, but even the rares are safe. I had this transformation in mind early when designing the set. So you will notice a heavy concentration of Commons and UltraRares with very few Rares in between. For example 900 of the 1111 byteGANs are skullGANs, octoGANs, and cyberGANs, about 300 each. This will be taking from these large groups and creating new rare subtypes of between 30-80 pieces a subtype.

But I wouldn’t worry about your rarity. Concentrate on fact that these are cool new designs with cool new stories, a richer universe. And when le Crucible burns out, the contract will be burned, forever locking the collection on the blockchain in that final state.

While we do not know what new subtypes will appear in the future some possibilities have been revealed by this graphic from le Crucible.

Pindar