ASCII

Value Thesis

How do ASCII items become valuable digital commodities over time?
  1. It's about usage: To "collect" an ASCII item you must build it by combining other items you own. For example, there is no way to mint "coffee" without owning "c", "o", "f", and "e". You use the items in your inventory to build higher level items.
  2. More specific items are harder to mint: The difficulty algorithm depends on how many characters an item is made up of. "Alice" is 5 times harder to mint than "A".
  3. More used items are harder to mint: The difficulty algorithm depends on its total supply, which means the more people mint an item, the harder it becomes to mint it. ASCII items are valuable not because of artificial scarcity, they are valuable because of organic usage.

Difficulty Formula

The difficulty to mint an item grows proportionally to the item's size (item.length) and total supply (popularity).
Next minter wait time when N people have minted an item
  = item.length * N

Total wait time to reach N total supply of an item
  = (item.length * 1) + (item.length * 2) ...  + (item.length * N)
  = item.length * (1 + 2 ...  + N)
  = item.length * (N * (N+1) / 2)

Difficulty Calculator

Try changing the item and the total supply fields to calculate how difficult it will become to mint an item over time. Some examples:
For item:
When total supply is:
The next minter needs to wait:
Total accumulated time to reach this total supply: