Secret Orderof the Mystic Skulls
Welcome
Basics
Archetypes
First Look: Revealing Traits
Trait Reveals
Directional Trait Rarity
GIF
Mint transaction
Attune transaction
Target reveal transaction

Chapter I: Rise of the Mystic Skulls

10k MysticSkulls can be unearthed on Secret Network. Each Skull is unique and generated during mint time, as well as fully encoded on chain. Initially the aspects of each skull are hidden to our eyes and must be revealed using alchemic potions. Each explorer can decide where to unearth skulls, giving it different attributes Skulls can be sold on Stashh as a secondary market Choose wisely: You can reveal a skull to hunt for rare traits or sell it before fully exposing its aspects

Project Basics

When a Skull is unearthed (minted), its properties (traits), visuals and all other metadata are encoded within the Secret contract. That means there is no IPFS or centralized storage layer you must trust. Whatever you excavate, is yours forever.

Each Skull is randomly generated at time of excavation from a set of over 120 different traits. Our contract ensures that no two excavated Skulls will be duplicates – both visually and trait-wise.

The on-chain generative process assigns traits according to a pre-defined probability curve, so we have a directional hint of trait rarity in advance. However, the final distribution of trait rarity will depend on the random outcomes of the excavation efforts of you and your peers.

Revealing your Skulls is a key focus in Chapter 1. Upon excavation, only a Skull’s base archetype is seen, including the Skull’s color and background, with all other traits hidden.

Gamified Trait Reveal

Each excavated Skull must be attuned once, revealing its first random trait.

As soon as a skull is attuned you can start brewing simple Restorative Identity Potion (RIP). The longer you let the potion simmer, the higher its potency.

Each skull has its own RIP-timer and whenever you decide to use the potion the timer for this skull resets.

Random Trait Reveal - Brew Time: 4 hours. You'll need to wait 4 hours before you can execute a random trait reveal.

Targeted Trait Reveal – Brew Time: 6 hours. By allowing the RIP to simmer for 6 hours after your last trait reveal, a RIP is potent enough to target the reveal of a trait category of your choosing. This may be advantageous for those trading Skulls with traits partially revealed.

Full Reveal – Brew Time: 30 hours. You may also allow your RIP to simmer even longer. After 30 hours of brewing, your RIP is potent enough to fully reveal all traits. This is the fastest way to fully reveal your Skull but requires patience in brewing.

Demo Video

The Video shows a glimpse at what to expect for chapter I. First we mint a number of fresh skulls, by choosing the excavation site on the nexus. This introduces a first gamified element, as the final rarity of the background depends on choices made by the community. Already discussions are happening in discord, if any background should be kept artificially scarce, to make it more valuable in the end. After minting the skulls we can see them in our gallery. Here we need to attune each skull to start the reveal game. Attuning will reveal a first, random trait and start the reveal potion timer. Depending on the wait time owners can make a choice between revealing a random, a targeted, or all traits. This is the main event during chapter I, as we expect prices, rarity and valuation to differ greatly between unrevealed skulls, skulls with desirable traits and skulls with coherent visuals.

Please note that the mint price, as well as reveal times have been adjusted for the demo.

The project is currently using viewingkeys, to reduce the node stress around launch, as permits take more CPU cycles to be decrypted on nodes. All contracts are prepared to support permits as well and we will switch soon after launch for ease of use.

Please note that due to the recording software the Keplr popup is not visible. See attached screenshots for a view of the transactions and then please use your imagination to see it on front of your third eye whenever the mouse moves to this position in the video <3

Technical details

The project uses SecretNetworks unique features, especially the privacy preserving contracts, to make the game work in this way. All skulls are randomly generated at the time of mint. We have an idea about trait rarity, but the exact numbers will only be set when the last skull was minted. Our contracts make sure that there are no trait or image duplicates, so each one will be unique, once fully revealed. This makes use of on-chain randomness, made possible by encrypted entropy, provided by each user. Skull DNA is embedded in the private token contract. Not even the owner has access to the full trait data until it is revealed via our game mechanic and put into the public metadata. Encoded on-chain: The properties of each skull, as well as the visuals and all other metadata is encoded within the secret contract. That means there is no IPFS or centralized storage that might lose your precious skulls. Whatever you mint, is yours forever. The project uses a number of secret contracts to facilitate the current functionality, as well as features planned for chapter II and III.

Outlook

The next chapter will introduce tokenized potions that can be mixed and resold. The community can discover a myriad of recipes, unlocking hidden pathways to unlock the rarest of all traits. Potions can be pre-fabricated and sold as well, again giving the choice to adept researcher to share their findings with the community, or keep them to themselves and profit from it.

Built With

cosmwasm
rust
secret-network
secretjs
svelte
typescript

Submitted to

Cosmos HackAtom VI

Created by

I led the design direction for the MysticSkulls assets, developing on pixelart skills to define novel capabilities in asset generation. Our on-chain generation process allows for complex cross-trait logic dependencies, giving us greater aesthetic authority and fidelity for trait combinations in a 10k collection.

Hermes Trismegistus
Core Team @MysticSkulls
I worked on the frontend application connecting the users with the secret network backend, as well as infrastructure like brining the assets on-chain and doing all kind of automated data validation and processing.
The main focus points are a user friendly interface, that is as efficient as possible to reduce the strain on the network around launch. Different mechanics were implemented like lazy fetching, local caching and optimistic responses to reduce the network requests, while maximizing responsibility for the visitor.

Archimedes of Syracuse
I wrote the secret contracts. I particularly enjoyed implementing the groundbreaking aspects like determining the random genetic traits at the time of minting, but keeping 9 of them hidden from even the owner until the owner participates in the gamified reveal process. Also, because traits can be revealed in random order, implementing a way to compose images on-the-fly with on-chain data instead of having to store images for every skull and every skull's possible permutations of intermediate states was a fun challenge.

Bill Wincer