The Difference Between NRI and DTI (and Why Both Should Matter to Collectors)

There are many ways that collectors try to determine which NFTs in a collection will become the most valuable. Some look for specific traits that seem to be rare. Others search for a visually appealing trait and collect as many as possible. In the world of Internet Computer NFTs, there are two sites that can help you seek out your ideal collectible. Let's take a look at what NRI and DTI are and how they work. Then you can decide which suits your collecting style.

What Is NRI?

You may notice the letters NRI and a percentage in the upper righthand corner of NFTs on the marketplace on the Entrepot marketplace. This is a rarity rating calculated by The NFT Village (the algorithm was developed by @BobBodily, a co-founder of Toniq labs who has a Ph.D. in data science). NRI stands for NFT Rarity Index. It is a third-party metric that attempts to determine the odds of your NFT having its exact traits. That is a difficult metric to measure. After all, every NFT in these collections is one of a kind. So how does it work?

1. The percent of NFTs that have a particular trait is computed.
2. All trait probabilities are multiplied (plus any customizations requested by the project team).
3. The probability is converted into a ranked percentage.    

Do investors care? Absolutely, they do. If an NFT can obtain the elusive 100% NRI score, they are likely to sell for a significantly higher price. In fact, those with an NRI of more than 99% or less than 1% are highly sought-after. This is due to the claim that NRI works on a bell curve. In other words, the rarest trait combinations would be both the top and bottom few percent, while commons would appear in the 30-70% range. However, the bell curve theory is contested, with some purists maintaining that rarity goes from zero to 100, with rarity strictly increasing as the NRI score does.

What Is DTI?

DTI stands for Dominant Trait Index, a rarity score found exclusively at DGDG.app. This is meant as a complementary rather than a competing index. The developer (@Cartographer on Discord) seeks to identify individual traits in a project. These traits are then indexed to determine rarity. While the process is similar, the results can sometimes be strikingly different.

One of the advantages of using the dgdg.app website is being able to sort collections by highest DTI. The site also allows you to sort by NRI (again because the idea is to provide additional information for collectors and not to complete with The NFT Village). You can also examine individual traits to quickly see which is the rarest in a collection and the floor price for each trait. To me, these are the most useful features of the site. You may be surprised by how often traits that appear in under 1% of a collection don't seem to create a very high NRI.

So while DTI is nowhere near as popular (due both to not being the official rarity and not appearing directly on the Entrepot marketplace), it can be effective in helping a collector to notice rare traits with a lower floor price or to quickly find all of the available NFTs in a collection with a specific trait. Remember that the index appears to update about once per hour, so sometimes you may see something you want only to discover it already sold on the marketplace. Conversely, someone may have listed an NFT with the same trait at a lower price since the last update, so you may still want to scroll manually to determine if you are really getting the best deal.

Information Is Power

In the world of NFT collecting, information is power, and you can never have too much. That is why I always check both the NRI and DTI of an NFT if both scores are available. Have fun hunting for those rare traits!

• Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on this website are solely those of the original author and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the Dfinity Community staff and/or any/all contributors to this site.