MoonCat Community Buying Guide
MoonCats are the first “On-Chain” Generative Art NFT, Cat NFT, and Naming-Feature (giving your NFT a name) NFT that is built on top of the Ethereum Blockchain, launching on August 9th, 2017. There is a max supply of 25,440 MoonCats. This Community Buying Guide is created to help you decide on which MoonCat is for you.
Edited By: CatDad & Vidpet
UPDATED: October 2021
JOIN THE MOONCAT COMMUNITY DISCORD HERE
Where to Buy?
Adoption Center: The “AC” is the original built-in marketplace where you can trade unwrapped MoonCats (the ERC-20 Standard in which MoonCats were initially created, predating the ERC-721 Standard by a few years, so some wallets may not display ownership of the unwrapped MoonCats). To buy on the AC, you can choose an “offered” cat, and then Adopt it into your Web 3.0 Wallet.
Official MoonCats — Acclimated: This is the official ERC-721 Wrapper that is currently being developed by ponderware, the original developers. Acclimated MoonCats can be traded on OpenSea, and a small fee from each transaction goes to the creators to fund future development. This is a great way to support the future of the project. Here you also have a lot of filters to find the cat you are looking for (rescue year, color, coat, clone, etc).
Note: The percentages of “how many MoonCats have this trait” are calculated by OpenSea and only count MoonCats that have been wrapped into Acclimation, not the max supply of 25,440. You can visit https://mooncat.pro/traits to see the entire breakdown of traits across all MoonCats.
Wrapped MoonCatsRescue — Unofficial: This is an unofficial wrapper which was created upon rediscovery in March of 2021 by an independent developer that is not related to the project. It does not list any metadata (traits/properties) of the cat, so it is much harder to filter for what you are specifically looking for. The Unofficial collection is decreasing everyday and the volume is shifting towards the Official Wrapper. Despite this wrapper being unofficial, these are legitimate MoonCats, just currently placed outside of integrating with future developments.
Note: The wrapped ID for these MoonCats is not their mint # (see below).
NFT Liquidity Pools: There are a couple of Liquidity Pools that are available for buying, selling, and swapping floor MoonCats. These pools have a flat price for all the MoonCats provided. To pull a MoonCat out, you’re required to hold the platform’s native token, which you can buy on one of the decentralized exchanges (Uniswap or SushiSwap). These are the pools currently available:
Unicly uGMC: 24 Genesis MoonCats (12 black, 12 white) have been placed in a vault (Red Cave Adventures) and fractionalized. You can purchase these fractions under the ticker $uGMC.
Note: You can wrap and unwrap MoonCats at any time and move them between varying wrappers. Inevitably the majority of MoonCats will be Acclimated, because this is where ponderware and supporting development teams are currently building on top of.
What to Buy?
First of all: all cats are good cats! :) — But there are some properties and traits that collectors specifically search for:
Early Rescue Cats (2017–2020):
- 2017: The first 3365 cats (rescue number #0-#3364) were minted in 2017. And as such, they’re most prized for being first. They fetch multiple times (3x+) the floor price. If you want to grab one which was minted on the first day (rescue number #0–491), you’ll have to pay even more the closer you approach Mooncat #0, the first ever minted MoonCat and considered the most valuable asset of the entire collection. Sub #100 cats have sold for more than 100x the floor price.
- 2018: Cats minted in 2018 (rescue number #3365-#5683) are also rare, and sell at a premium (2x+).
- 2019–2020: These are super rare because there were only a few cats minted in these years: 71 in 2019 (#5684-#5754), and only 3 in 2020! (#5755-#5757)
Character Cats and More: Some investors prefer aesthetics and choose to value cats that resemble popular Cat & Crypto Characters as more valuable:
- Garfield: The most notable one of these, Garfields (Orange Tabby Cats) are the most popular Character Cats and have consistently sold far above floor prices.
- Cheshire Cats (Pale Purple Tabby or Pale Magenta Tabby, preferably smiling)
- Alien Cats (Pale Blue or Pale Sky Blue with a Pure Coat)
- Zombie Cats (Pale Green or Pale Teal with a Pure Coat)
- Pink Panthers (Pale Fuchsia or Pale Red with a Pure Coat)
- You can find the charts for these cats at https://ratemymoon.cat/
- There are many other characters that the community has identified (Melon Cats, Pikachus, etc). You can find the latest chart pinned in the community Discord server.
- Some cat collectors also look at the ID number (for example 0x0068bad75f) and assign a premium for things such as being all numeric, or more leading zeros (0x000, 0x0000), or if they spell something (0x0068bad75f).
- As with any collectible community, valued traits and trends will emerge and may change over time.
2021 cats: Cats that were minted during the rediscovery of March 2021 (#5758-#25439) are considered less rare, oftentimes referred to as “Floor Cats”. They generally trade multiples lower than Early Rescues and Character Cats, but serve as a great introduction for newcomers, and a testing ground for new features developed by ponderware and supporting Dev Teams. As a way to value premium “Floor Cats” over others, some traits and properties fetch a small-to-large increase including: Character Cats, Pures, Tabbies, Statistical & Trait Rarity %, and some accessories.
Clones, Mirrors, Twins, & Litter Size: As MoonCats were minted and rendered, some appeared the same, while others shared many of the same traits. For this occurrence created the values of Clones, Mirrors, Twins, and Litter Sizes
- Litter Size: These are cats that share the same rendered color and fur pattern
- Twins: These are cats from the same litter which share an expression
- Mirrors: These are twins who share the same pose
- Clones: These cats are visually identical Clones are considered the rarest of the bunch and fetch a premium that is generally 2x-3x the floor price, meanwhile Clone Pairs bundled together have sold for upwards of 10x the floor price.
Named Cats: MoonCats were the first NFT that adopted a naming feature, which is irreversible. Once a cat is named, that name stays with the cat forever, regardless of how many times it is resold, wrapped/unwrapped, or how much time passes. Some collectors dislike named cats, thinking there is more value if that option is still available. Some collectors prefer Early Rescued Cats to be named, and others have no preference whatsoever.
Cats with Rare Traits: Cats that have a very low trait rarity score (e.g. below 2%) or have some special traits like being a clone, can also fetch a premium price. You can check all the traits and the trait rarity score of any given cat at https://mooncat.pro/traits
Trait & Statistical Rarity Explained: “Trait Rarity” and “Statistical Rarity” are a set of algorithms that community members brought from other NFT communities and aren’t specific to MoonCats. So, they’re not “black boxes”; it’s that they aren’t specific to MoonCats. It’s a set of ranking algorithms that sites like https://rarity.tools/ uses as generic ways to rank different NFT collections. The way the algorithms work is that for every NFT, you first find all the traits they have, and evaluate them as a fraction of how many of the collection have them. For example, an NFT with a trait that only 25 out of the 10,000 NFTs in the collection had, plus a trait that 2,000 out of the 10,000 had, would start with a list of “25/10,000, 2,000/10,000”. For “trait rarity”, that list of trait fractions/ratios is sorted such that the rarest trait is first. Then all the NFTs in the collection are compared to see who has the best “rarest” trait, and if there’s any ties, then rank by the second-most-rare trait of each of them, etc. For “statistical rarity”, the list of traits is multiplied together. Those values are then sorted, and the lowest values are considered ranked “best”. -Midnight Lightning
Cats with Accessories: ponderware launched an Accessory Designer open for anybody to design and sell accessories in the MoonCat Boutique. Accessories purchased for a MoonCat will stay with it forever and are non-transferrable and can be displayed/hidden anytime. Some accessories have a limited supply, while others are created by a community favorite or luxury designer, and therefore can increase the value of a MoonCat.
Genesis Cats: There are 96 unique black or white cats that were offered up for adoption by ponderware in 2017. These are the crown jewels of the project and are considered some of the most rare MoonCats. Out of 96 Genesis cats, 16 were minted in the first 100 MoonCats (#84-#99) and are considered the most valuable. Genesis MoonCats come in all expressions and coats while Black Genesis cats are limited to the Standing and Pouncing poses, while White Genesis Cats are limited to the Sleeping and Stalking poses.
