Collections and Containers

How an NFT proves membership in a collection, what a Container adds, and what a collection label alone proves.

Protocol behavior Verified 2026-08-31 Metadata & Sources

Describes the Atomicals protocol itself at the pinned reference revision. It does not promise that any product exposes it.

Page ID

protocol/nft/collections-and-containers

Normative authority

Atomicals reference implementation

Networks

mainnet

Documentation version

2026.08

Audience

creator, developer

Owner

bitcoin-universe-docs

Sources

Atomicals ElectrumX at v1.5.2.0

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A collection in Atomicals is not a label. It is a relationship a validator can check.

The weak form: a metadata claim

An NFT payload can say it belongs to a collection. Nothing checks that. Anyone can mint an object claiming membership in anything.

A product that groups by a metadata field is grouping by an unverified string.

The strong form: a Container

A Container is a named Atomical that represents the collection identity. Items prove membership against it, and with a sealed DMINT manifest that proof is checkable.

Property	Metadata claim	Container membership
Anyone can assert it	Yes	No
A validator can check it	No	Yes, against the manifest
Rules can be changed later	Not applicable	No, once sealed
Item count is bounded	No	Yes, by the manifest

See Containers and DMINT.

Parent linkage

Mint commands accept --parent and --parentowner, which link the new object to a parent Atomical at mint time. That linkage is set once and is part of the mint.

What to display

The collection’s Container Atomical ID, not just its name.
Whether the manifest is sealed.
Whether this item’s membership was verified against the manifest, or merely asserted in metadata.
The number of verified items against the manifest total.

A user interface that shows a collection name without those four is showing a claim.