Overview
Permanent Pixels are 50 “pixel” X 50 “pixel” images that are generated and stored 100% on chain on the Polygon network, in a truly random manner (using Chainlink VRF). Each image contains 2500 “pixels,” all of which have an equally likely chance to be black or white. There can be up to 10,000,000 (10 Million) Permanent Pixels created.
Infinite Ape Theory
The Permanent Pixels Project is based on a child theory of the Infinite Monkey theory we have named the Infinite Ape Theory:
Randomly changing the color of pixels in an image, an infinite number of times, will eventually result in visually significant creations.
The NFT
Subjective Rarity
The most rare Permanent Pixels will be the ones that validate the Infinite Ape Theory. These NFTs will have some type of visual significance. This measure is too subjective to capture in the NFT’s metadata, and visually significant Permanent Pixels will be extremely, extremely rare.
Objective Rarity
Since there is an equally likely chance that each of the 2500 pixels in every NFT will be either black or white, it can be assumed that the “average” NFT will have 1250 black and 1250 white pixels. The further the number of black and white pixels in an NFT deviates from the “average,” the more rare it is. This measure of mathematical rarity is included in the metadata for every NFT.
Technology
On-Chain
Permanent Pixels are stored and created 100% on the blockchain. None of the NFTs are created in advance of the project launch: NFTs are created when they are minted. Permanent Pixels are truly “permanent” because all of their data is stored on the blockchain — not “off-chain” in a location where the data could be edited or deleted in the future. Fully on-chain projects like Permanent Pixels are extremely difficult to create and are in the rare minority of NFT projects.
Truly Random
Every time a Permanent Pixel NFT is created, it uses a random number as its seed. It is possible to generate pseudo random numbers on the blockchain, but it is very difficult to generate truly random numbers on the blockchain. Currently, the only solution to this problem is to use Chainlink VRF (Verifiable Random Function) technology. Chainlink VRF has been integrated into the Permanent Pixels project to ensure that the random numbers used to create the NFTs cannot be predicted. Similar to fully on-chain projects, the VRF is another technology that is difficult to implement and rare to see in NFT projects.
Polygon Network
Permanent Pixels live on the Polygon network instead of the Ethereum network, making their cost to mint a fraction of the cost they would be on the Ethereum network.
Optimized
On-chain NFTs can be extremely expensive to mint in comparison to off-chain projects. Off-chain projects typically only write one line of code to the blockchain, whereas on-chain project mint multiple lines of code to the blockchain. The more data written to the chain, the more expensive it is to mint an NFT. However, the amount of data written to the chain during the minting process for Permanent Pixels has been reduced from 2500+ lines of code, to just 1. Permanent Pixels are 100% on-chain, but write the same amount of data to the chain as off-chain projects do.