Loading
PRICE DISCUSSION DOCS
APP
Updated 2026-08-03·View as Markdown

For Artists — What are Subtraits?

A Subtrait is a PD-unique middle layer in your trait taxonomy: a named bucket that groups one trait's values. Where most platforms give you two levels — trait and value — PD gives you three:

Trait → Subtrait → Value

A trait called Layer might bucket its values into Surface (Crust, Sediment, Drift) and Deep (Mantle, Bedrock, Vein). A trait called Palette with 100 values might split into six headline Main palettes and 94 Special ones. The bucket is the Subtrait.

What a Subtrait is — and isn't

A Subtrait is a derived grouping of one trait's values, not a separate trait axis and not per-token data. A value's bucket membership is its subtrait: nothing extra is rolled at mint, and nothing extra is frozen into the token. Two properties follow, and both are worth designing around:

  • Subtraits are schema, not token data. The grouping lives in your trait schema, so you can regroup, rename, or refine buckets at any time — before or after mint-out — without touching the chain. Your outputs' frozen trait values never change; how they're organized can.
  • Subtraits are complete by construction. Every value of a subtrait-ed trait belongs to exactly one bucket, so the buckets always reassemble into the full value pool — no orphans, no overlaps, no value stranded outside the drill-down.

What collectors see

Subtraits are how a large trait space stays legible on a phone. On a Project gallery, the trait pill row drills down through your taxonomy: tapping a trait's pill opens its Subtrait buckets, and tapping a bucket narrows to its values. Collectors browse and filter by the bucket as naturally as by the value — Palette → Main / Special → the palette — and rarity surfaces read the bucket too, so an Output can present as a Special before it presents as one value among a hundred.

A flat trait (no Subtraits) is perfectly fine: its pill drills straight to values. But when a trait's values have natural families — headline versus deep-cut, common versus ceremonial, warm versus cool — Subtraits let the work's own structure do the organizing.

Making them

Subtraits are built in the Studio's upload flow, in the Traits & Subtraits panel: scan your script's real outputs to collect each trait's value pool, add named buckets, and place every value in one. A trait only ships as a Subtrait once every value is placed, so a half-finished grouping never ships a broken drill-down. The workflow — scanning, the +rest sweep, re-bucketing — is covered in Upload & Testing.

Traits — and therefore Subtraits — are always optional. Every Output carries PD's platform traits regardless of what your script declares.

Further reading