BulletEyeDK

Posted on Jul 23, 2021Read on Mirror.xyz

Finding a unique txn to mint as $HASH

"This is our first guest post from a $HASH historian from the DAO. These folks have some deep insights about $HASH hunting, uncovering historic moments, and leveraging tools to realize their archeological ambitions.

Excited to have BulletEyeDk share his tips around finding your txn to mint!" - David Sun


I've been in love with the ProofOfBeauty project since the Genesis S0 season, and minted my first POB NFT almost 6 months ago.

I have spent countless hours scouting various blockchain explorers, using distinct website tools, building scraping scripts, and using SQL hunting for unique txn to mint.

Since i joined the Historians DAO a few members of the POB discord have asked me for help/assistance to find unique txn to mint.

With this blog i will try to explain how to get started looking for something cool to mint.

How to start searching

The most basic search you can start with is searching ERC-20 projects and look up the contract creation of a project.

As an example im going to look up Uniswap on Coinmarketcap.com, browsing Uniswap you're going to hover the "explorers" menu. Select "etherscan.io" and then click on this.

You're now presented with an overview of Uniswap, on this page you need to go to the profile summary on the right upper side of the page, here you need to click on the "contract" as highlighted in the image below.

Doing that will open up the page for the Uniswap contract, on this page you're going to click on the "txn 0x4b37...." as highlighted on the image above.

You're now presented with a page transaction details for the Uniswap contract creation, the transaction $HASH "0x4b37d2f343608457ca3322accdab2811c707acf3eb07a40dd8d9567093ea5b82" is the one you're looking for, as this was the transaction used for deploying the contract of Uniswap Protocol: UNI token.

Now copy the transaction $HASH and paste it onto ProofOfBeauty search bar.

https://hash.pob.studio/

Once you do that, you will notice, that this already has been minted in Genesis S0 as mint number #73

As you can see on the mint information, the owner has described this as "UNI creation tx".

Seeing a green "Verified" tick mark next to a mint, indicates that this mint has been verified by the Historian DAO that it represents whats is written in the description.

Searching further using explorers

Another approach for some unique mints, could be to look up other known projects in the NFT space.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club: BAYC Token has seen much interest, so let's dive a bit into that.

From another POB mint we know this txn is the creation of the contract in that particular project

If you follow that link, you will get to the transaction details page on etherscan.io, see below image

First you click the txn contract

Then click the tracker: BoredApeYachtClub (BAYC)

You're now presented with the Token page for the BoredApeYachtClub, for the example please go click last

Doing this you're viewing the first transactions.

It seems looking at the txn $HASH and method compared to the TokenID most right, that a lot of "Apes" has been reserved in the exact same txn.

Let's go back a page, click previous once

You should now be at the exact same page af the bottom of the above image.

Now click the txn highlighted in the image

Doing that, you should now see the same page as the image shows below:

So it seems that the txn 0x8b119c0955a2e4402e6c11b820e84fa700b5e4d36b58e898ef8a4f0668a2f062 was used for minting 2 Bored Ape Yacht Club Apes, with ID 31 and 32.

Using nftexp.io it's possible to look up Bored Apes Yacht Club by token ID.

Those minted in the txn in the example look like this:

Now go ahead and look up the txn at ProofOfBeauty

At the time of writing this blog, this $HASH is not minted yet.

How to search further

One of the first website tools i used to search for random unique txn was this site

It seems the site isn't updated for displaying S1: SAGA previews, but none the less, it's still possible to use.

If you try to make a search with start block: 430250 Num Blocks: 100 and then hit scan, you will get the following result:

What you see displayed here is the number of transactions within the 100 blocks you wanted to search.

To hunt down unique and beautiful pieces, there is also a manuel process, you can take each txn and paste it onto the searhbar at ProofOfBeauty, to check how it looks visually and also get to know if it's already minted by someone else.

A significant parameter is the number of leading zeros in the transaction $HASH

In S1: SAGA a $HASH without any leading zero's will have 2 circles, for each leading zero an extra circle are added.

The transaction with the most leading zero's as of today is this very nice piece, which have amazing 8 leading zero's, it was minted in S0: Genesis season as number 894.

If you dive deep into the above image, you will see this txn was also found using the website tool.

A total of 33 transactions with 7 leading zero's has until now ever been recorded on the ethereum blockchain, all those except one was minted in the S0: Genesis season.

The S1: Saga mint with 7 leading zero's is viewable on ProofOfBeauty here

Actually there is a lot of parameters that generates how the ProofOfBeauty NFT's end up visually, you might want to dive a bit into that in this blog posted earlier this year, this digs into how the SAGA algorithm works

Advanced search using SQL

Searching for a specific number of leading zero's or other parameters, i would recommend using SQL, which is a bit more complicated

To search the ethereum blockchain i recommend using Google Cloud BigQuery, it's free of charge for the first 1TB of data per month you use.

Use this link to get to the project page inside Google Cloud BigQuery platform.

Starting out on the platform you will need to navigate to "crypto_ethereum" as the dataset you will be searching.

The open up the tree structure by selecting "transactions", this will show you which exact variables that are searchable using the dataset.

If you click details shown in the upper middle of the screen you will see the statistics of the dataset

As of writing this blog post, the data seems to be approx. 45 minutes behind actual time, but updated continuosly.

Using SQL to extract data requires some knowledge, i really can't get into teaching SQL in this blog post, but as an example i will show you how to search for the top 10 most used ERC-721 contracts as of 20. july 2021.

Use the query below, and you will get a result like this: (i added tracker name)

The above contracts could be a starting point for finding unique txn within these projects.

Search for historic transactions

For some this task is just straightforward, but for many it may be hard, where to start. It's all about knowning the history of ethereum.

A good start i would say could be to look at english wiki page for ethereum

Within this page you will find this table:

As you see on the above image, ethereum had some protocol upgrades at specific block numbers.

I have highlighted the Berlin upgrade which was released 15. april 2021 at block number 12244000.

Now please go look up that blocknumber in this explorer

Viewing that page shows you the transactions in that block listed cronological, now go ahead and click on the first transaction hash

This transaction is the first txn in the block published as being the first block after the Berlin upgrade.

You might want to go look that transaction up on ProofOfBeauty

After you have connected your wallet, you could most probably see "Mint now". If you see exact text phrase, this transaction is still available to mint.

If you see "Opensea" mentioned instead, this transaction has already been minted by someone else.

Looking up historic NFT mints/sales

This is all about knowing your stuff about the NFT space, im still not too deep into that area, but as a part of the Historians DAO i have already stumpled upon some request to verify mints that represents transactions that includes minting of famous NFT art pieces and such.

So i guess google would be your best assistant here, dig into what is valuable for people into the NFT space.

Once you stumple upon a project, you need to dig into this a bit further. At first is this deployed on ethereum blockchain or some other, this is crucial to check.

As an example let's explore an NFT called "Fade" by Pak, look up this page

We see that this NFT has the smart contract address: 0x62f5418d9edbc13b7e07a15e095d7228cd9386c5

Click the address of the contract to look it up

Investigating the page we see the following information at tracker: Fade (FADE)

At the bottom of the page you will see the transaction mentioned as being used in the creation of the contract.

Click on txn 0x9662000....

Doing so, will take you to the transaction details, on this page you will see that this txn was used to mint Fade ERC-721 token with ID: 1

Now use the txn $HASH on ProofOfBeauty

You will see that this exact $HASH is already minted.

Thanks for taking your time to read this pretty long blog post.

If you're still not to clear about what to do to find some unique and maybe also beautiful NFT's to mint, you're more than welcome to peak around on this website i made for showcasing some of my $HASH finds for ProofOfBeauty.

Most of the stuff on the website is free to take at whatever price you want, a few pieces have a set price.

Please note that buying anything from the shop only gives you the $HASH that you need to use for minting the NFT it self.