The time is finally upon us. The festival in honor of the great Hou-ou has arrived. For generations, the Hou-ou slept, but thanks to the glorious efforts of the RMRK brotherhood, the Hou-ou has risen.

Given the uniqueness of this moment in time, we decided to compile this Hou-ou festival guide for all, both believers and non-believers. In it, we walk you through the most asked questions about this interesting period. We begin at genesis.

The Birth of Kanaria

To get to the Hou-ou festival, we first had to build Kanaria as a means to retrieve and distribute the lost eggs. If you’re familiar with Kanaria, the lost eggs, and their 4 categories, then scroll down to the section on the Hou-ou festival. The RMRK brethren created the Kanaria platform in March to fulfill two purposes:

1. Act as an initial collectible offering to help raise funds for our wild ambition to create the ultimate user experience (UX) in the nascent NFT space, with the view to draw in more people to the world of freedom and chaos (decentralization).
2. As a tech demo for RMRK 2.0, the most advanced NFT system in crypto.

Upon launch of Kanaria, the lost eggs were retrieved and made available for claiming on Kusama, Polkadot’s wild cousin. Believers were invited to stake their pledge to a worthy mission by depositing their precious KSM to lay claim to an egg.

The Kanaria Eggs

The Kanaria eggs are special for the following reasons:

• The Kanaria eggs are unique NFTs that can evolve over time. For example, they will hatch into birds during the Hou-ou festival. But their ability for change goes beyond this. They can take on new appearances and accessories based on the emotes (emojis) sent to them.
• Unlike regular static NFTs, they possess all the abilities inherent in the RMRK 2.0 framework, like the ability to own another NFT, change another NFT, change its look, etc. (more on this below)
• Some Kanaria eggs give their owner a claim to a % of the revenue from the RMRK ecosystem.
• They possess traits that give them powers in the RMRK ecosystem and beyond, as evidenced by the announcement here and here. They entitle their holders to a fairdrop of RMRK tokens.

9,999 eggs from four distinct clans were retrieved:

• Super founders—the super founders are the strongest Kanarias out there. They hail from the north of the divide and are well-known for their nobility and grace. They give their holder a whopping 0.5% of all RMRK revenue in perpetuity. Plus, they have 5 trait sockets, meaning they can hold 5 different traits—like a discount trait, early-bird trait, etc.
• Founders—the founders are almost as grand as the super founders but their kindness brings them down a peg. This is because they let some of their power flow to the Rares (further explained below). They come with 4 trait sockets with one prefilled with a 0.1% trait, giving the holder 0.1% of RMRK revenue in perpetuity.
• Rares—the darlings of the founders. According to the scrolls, Rares are born when two super founders sacrifice some of their life force to create a new bird. They have a minimum of 2 sockets, up to 4 if all are claimed. 50 of them will have one trait socket pre-filled with the 0.1% Rev trait. They are also guaranteed a rare tradable prop (950 of 9999 eggs can possibly have this).
• Limited editions—although the lowest birds in the pecking order, they are graceful in their own right. So graceful in fact that all Rares create flocks with LEs and not founders. This is because the rares find it easier to relate to the more down-to-earth nature of the LEs.

With information about the birth of Kanaria and the eggs out of the way, we can now turn our full focus to the Hou-ou festival.

What to Expect From the Hou-ou Festival

The festival began on June 1st and will go on for 30 days. During this festival, 3 distinct events will be going on simultaneously.

Egg burnings

For the new birds to hatch, the unclaimed eggs must be sacrificed. If all eggs were claimed, then there would be no need for burning. But life isn’t always good. Thus, the eggs that couldn’t call to any believer to claim them will be sent back to the lost ether. This is both a thing of sorrow and joy for, without the burnings, we won’t get the hatchings.

Bird hatchings

All eggs that have been claimed will start hatching. This will be one of the most exciting parts of the festival because no one knows what their bird will look like. This is made doubly intriguing by the fact that the emotes sent to an egg have a probability of influencing the look of the bird that hatches out of it. And when it comes to appearance, many features are influenceable.

• Mood: Face emojis (smiling 🙂, laughing 😆, sad 😟, crying 😭, sleepy 😪) influence the bird’s facial looks. This affects the bird permanently.
• Mutagens: Emojis of other animals, plants, and natural elements influence the bird’s body, eyes, beak/mouth (tree-bark-skin 🌴, with cat tail 🐱, fish head 🐟, fire feathers 🔥). This also affects the bird’s look permanently.
• Accessories: Emojis of things and food influence what the bird is holding (eating avocado 🥑, holding axe 🪓, surfboard in foreground 🏄‍♀️, snow boots ❄+🥾, target as decal sticker on wings 🎯, really nice hairdo as headwear 💈, hardhat as headwear 👷‍, blue necklace 📿+🟦, robot wings 🤖). This is an NFT in its own right (child NFT).
• Background: Emojis of the environment or certain activities influence the background the bird is standing or flying in (mountains in the background 🏔, on the beach 🏖, in a temple 🧘, in a dojo 🎌🧘‍♂️).

Trait reveals

Also as exciting as the bird hatchings are the trait reveals. With 4 traits available and more to be added as time goes on, many bird holders will be eager to know what traits their Kanarias possess. Some traits include:

• The Discount trait will give the holder a certain discount on specific RMRK products like apps, SaaS, and more, going as far as entirely removing fees and commissions in certain UIs and apps (like an Auction house that has a commission). For example, you want to mint your own Cryptopunks/Kanaria-like NFT ICO. If done from an address with a Discount bird, the platform will waive a part of the creation fee.
• The Free trait will allow a holder to launch an RMRK service for free, like a 100% Discount trait. This can be used on something as simple as minting an NFT, to something as powerful as launching an NFT sale with RMRK and not being charged a success fee on it (possibly millions of dollars in savings). Traits like these will have a limited number of uses.
• The Early Bird trait will allow a holder to gain early access to RMRK-incubated projects and early launches of both internal RMRK tools and products, and partner teams.
• The Event Access trait can be event-specific or provide blanket access to all RMRK partner events, allowing you free entry (physical, digital, or both) to events.
• The Revenue Share trait will share up to 0.5% of the RMRK Association’s future revenue with its holder. Do you hold several such birds? The effects stack. The community of our believers is, quite literally, RMRK’s biggest “VC”.

Not all birds will come with all their trait sockets filled with traits. Some, especially super founders, will have their empty sockets filled with a "free trait" Trait. This enables the holder to replace the free trait with a functional trait once it becomes available. For example, with the announced partnerships with Karura, Khala, Unique Network, Bit.Country, etc, many traits will be released in the coming months.

What to Avoid During the Hou-ou Festival

Losing flocks forever

All holders of Rares beware! Every Rare is bound in a flock with some limited editions. If all the birds in a flock are not claimed, then that flock will be lost to all time. If this happens, then the special ability which this flock had (and which would have been possessed by all the birds in the flock) will be lost also. A Hou-ou tragedy if ever there was one. That said, the claimed birds from an incomplete flock will be able to exist on their own. They just won’t possess the special trait that the flock unlocks.

A burn instead of a hatch

This is the most important information in this guide. If your claimed egg doesn’t have 3 hatching emotes (🐣🐣🐣) on it by the end of Hou-ou, your egg will be stuck as an egg forever. This will be a true disaster and we don’t want it to happen to anyone. So please, if you own an egg, STOP READING NOW! Go and confirm that your egg has 🐣🐣🐣emotes on it. If it doesn’t, ask your friends to help you. You can drop a comment under this post and hope that a good Kusamaritan 😁 helps you.

Conclusion: What to Do After the Hou-ou Festival

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and on the 30th of June, the Hou-ou festival will come to its noble conclusion. But this isn’t a sad event because the end of Hou-ou means the start of a new frontier. The Kanarias will be free to fly to other ecosystems in search of freedom, high yields, rewards, etc. Below are a few things you can look out for post-Hou-ou:

• Anticipate the release of RMRK 2.0 and the dawn of nested NFTs, conditional rendering, reactive NFTs, NFTs as DAOs, and a lot more. You can read more about it here.
• Use your Kanaria as collateral to take out DeFi loans. This feature will grow in tandem with our partnerships. Follow us on Twitter to stay up to date.
• Hunt for more traits and make use of the functional trait replacement feature.
• Collect upcoming traits and props as we launch them and participate in an evolving ecosystem of NFTs with forever-liquidity.

For now, the glory of Hou-ou reigns. Join the fun—burnings, hatchings, reveals, and more - by tuning into the telegram chat here, or by following our blog and twitter. If you haven't claimed an egg yet, then what are you waiting for? Head over to Kanaria to claim and join the eggolution.

Bonus Update

Every egg saved from the fire of Hou-ou will get a special "last call" trait. No, we won't tell you what that means yet!