What is rarity on Toko?
How Toko decides which tokens are scarce — the three models, the maths behind the Weighted curve, and why a tier is a budget, not just a label.
Rarity is how a collection says “this token is scarcer than that one.” On Toko it isn't a label a creator sprinkles on by feel — it's a policy the collection enforces, with a model you choose and rules the platform applies the same way every time.
Weighting is not rarity. In the Generator, “weighting” controls how often a part is picked when art is assembled — it's a composition setting. Rarity is a separate, collection-level decision about how scarce a finished token is. A part can be common in the art and still sit in a rare token, and vice-versa. Watch the 25-second explainer →
Rarity is a collection decision
Every collection on Toko has a rarity model, set once at the collection level. New collections start in Uniform — no rarity at all — and you switch deliberately, with a confirmation step, because changing the model resets any rarity assignments you'd made. Rarity lives next to the collection's other promises (supply, attributes, the guardian), and like them it locks when the collection goes Live, so buyers can trust the scarcity they bought into.
Three ways to do rarity
Toko gives you three models, from “none” to “fully automatic”:
| Model | Who assigns the tier | Tiers | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uniform | No tiers — every token is equal. | None | Sets where scarcity isn't the point. |
| Tiered | You, by hand. The system shows score guidance, but never picks for you. | Your own — custom names and colours. | Curated sets where you decide what's rare by judgement. |
| Weighted | The system, deterministically, by score. | Toko's official set (see below). | Generative collections where rarity should follow the maths. |
With Tiered, you invent the tiers (say General → Colonel → Major) and place every token yourself. Toko shows each token's Final Score and its rank to help, but there's deliberately no “suggested tier” — only you know your intended criteria. With Weighted, you don't place anything: you shape a curve and the system ranks tokens by score and fills the tiers.
How Weighted actually works
Weighted uses Toko's fixed official tiers. Three are available to everyone; two more unlock later:
You don't set the per-tier counts directly. Instead you shape the distribution with two dials, and Toko computes the quotas read-only over your Max Supply:
- Ratio — how much scarcer each rarer tier is than the one below it.
- Accelerator — how much the curve steepens toward the rarest tiers.
The moment you choose Weighted, Toko applies sensible defaults — Max Supply 1,000, ratio 3, accelerator 1.0 — which gives this split on the three-tier set:
Turn the ratio up and the curve gets steeper — the rarest tier becomes much harder to land:
Unlocking Epic and Legendary — a creator-account capability you buy by burning $TOKO (Project Mastery), so it applies across all your collections — extends the set to five tiers (weights 81 : 27 : 9 : 3 : 1 at ratio 3 ≈ 67% / 22% / 7% / 2.5% / 0.8%). The names and colours of the Weighted tiers are reserved — you tune the curve, not the labels.
A tier is a budget, not a label
This is the part that surprises people. In Weighted, a tier's quota is a mint budget — a cap on how many copies across that whole tier may ever be minted. It is not a cap on how many token definitions can carry the tier. Each definition gets exactly one tier and its own supply policy, and you're allowed to oversubscribe:
The budget is drawn down and enforced only at mint — first-come, in one atomic transaction — and it's frozen the moment the collection goes Live. That's what keeps the meaning of “Rare” honest no matter how many Rare definitions you author.
Because you can oversubscribe, you can author definitions you'll never fully mint. That's acceptable only because the Live management view always shows, per tier, budget · minted · remaining and a per-definition “mintable now” — so the limit is never a surprise.
How a token gets its tier
In Tiered you place tokens by hand. In Weighted, assignment is driven by a token's score and is fully deterministic — same inputs, same tiers, every time:
A few rules keep this predictable. Tiers never re-shuffle in the background: only the transitioning token is auto-assigned as it moves to Review, and a collection-wide reshuffle happens only when you run an explicit Rebalance. You can also override any token to a tier by hand; an overridden token is flagged and excluded from rebalance until you undo it.
What's locked, and when
Everything that defines scarcity freezes at collection go-live: the rarity model, Max Supply, the ratio and accelerator, the unlocked tier set, and each token's tier (written once as its permanent locked_tier). After Live, rarity is read-only — there's no “expand supply” later, which is exactly why the curve is worth getting right before you launch. The roster still stays open: you can keep authoring and going Live with new definitions, but always against the budgets you already froze.
In short
- Rarity ≠ weighting. Weighting is how often a part appears in the art; rarity is collection scarcity policy.
- Three models: Uniform (none), Tiered (you assign, custom tiers), Weighted (the system assigns by score, fixed tiers).
- Weighted is shaped by two dials — ratio and accelerator — over Max Supply. Defaults (1,000 / 3 / 1.0) give ≈ 69% / 23% / 8%.
- A tier is a mint budget of copies, enforced first-come at mint. Oversubscription is allowed by design.
- It's deterministic and frozen. No silent re-tiering; tiers and the whole curve lock at go-live.