Night Watch is an art collection of 455 animated impossible animal trios strolling around in a mysterious void. Each animation has 15 frames, and each frame of each animation is an NFT. By collecting the same frames of an animation in the same wallet, you form an animation of those frames. Your goal is to complete the animation by collecting all 15 frames.

There are 15 unique animals in Night Watch:

• Caretta

• Elephant

• Tortoise

• Lemur

• Seahorse

• Seal

• Giraffe

• Lion

• Whale

• Unicorn

• Penguin

• Panda

• Dolphin

• Rhino

• Gorilla

Each animal forms a trio with each other. You can calculate the unique number of gifs with 15 combinations of 3 (₁₅C₃), resulting in 455 unique gifs.

Using our mapping tool, we assign every trio a randomized ID for onchain identification. We store the random unique ID and the frames of each token onchain by compressing them into 24 bits of small data packs. This method allows us to process Merge events onchain with maximal efficiency.

You can read more about this process in our Technical Breakdown article.

Merge events occur onchain when you transfer the frames of the same gif into a single wallet. For example, let's say someone has the 4th frame of the Gorilla-Penguin-Panda trio, and you have the 10th frame of the same trio. If you buy or receive that token from them, a merge event will occur.

When a merge event occurs, two things will follow:

1. The token with the higher token ID will be burned.

2. An animation will be generated with the frames from the two tokens, and the changes will be reflected in the metadata.

Let's illustrate with an example:

Alice has Night Watch #1346, which represents the trio Giraffe-Lemur-Seahorse with frames 4 and 6. Bob has #4221 with the same trio and frame 9. If Bob purchases #1346, his token #4221 will be burned, and token #1346 will now feature the Giraffe-Lemur-Seahorse trio with frames 4, 6, and 9. The token's GIF will display these 3 frames instead of the previous 2. Traits will be updated to reflect these changes on marketplaces like OpenSea.

In the end, while Bob acquired 2 tokens, he now has 1 token with more frames, as the frames from the two tokens merged into the final one.

Night Watch has a more complex transfer function to achieve onchain merging. Thus, it's recommended not to keep more than 10 tokens in the same wallet to ensure low transfer gas costs. You can collect as many Night Watch NFTs as you desire, but it's advisable to store them in separate wallets if you accumulate a large number.