FAQ

Including the questions with answers people do not want.

Money

What does it cost to mint?

Two Bitcoin transaction fees, paid to miners, plus at least 100000 sats parked in the carrier output. The protocol charges nothing. There is no mint price and no treasury.

Where does my bitcoin go?

Nowhere. It stays in an output your own wallet controls. Nobody else can move it, and no protocol rule can freeze it.

Can I spend the endowment?

Yes, whenever you like, without asking anyone. Spending it ends the current stretch and resets depth to zero. That is the only consequence.

What is an artifact worth?

We do not answer that. The protocol has no price, no market, and no opinion about value, and nothing in this documentation will ever contain a projection.

Is there a token?

No. There is no fungible token, no supply, no emission schedule, and nothing to trade against. An artifact is an id, an outpoint, your own coins, and a history.

Minting

Why do I have to wait 144 blocks?

So your claim cannot be sniped. The reveal must spend your commit output, and only your key can do that. A bot that copies your reveal produces a transaction it cannot fund. The age requirement is what makes the commit meaningful rather than decorative.

Can I reveal early if I pay a higher fee?

No. It is a protocol rule, not a queue. A reveal with fewer than 144 blocks of commit age confirms on Bitcoin, produces SEED_COMMIT_TOO_YOUNG, and creates nothing.

Is it first come first served?

No. There is no rank, no serial number, and no advantage to committing early inside the window. Minting on the last day produces the same kind of Seal as the first day.

Can I mint more than one?

Yes. Each needs its own commit, its own reveal, its own salt, and its own carrier holding at least 100000 sats.

Can someone farm the whole founding cohort?

Anyone with enough bitcoin can mint many Seals. We do not filter, because every filter needs someone to trust us. We publish concentration statistics during the window instead of after it. Read What it does not promise.

Can the window be extended?

No. The heights are in the deployment record and the chain passes them. There is no extension mechanism and nobody has a key that could add one.

What happens after the window closes?

Seeding continues, with a 10000 sat minimum and founding: false. Those artifacts accumulate depth and rings exactly the same way. The founding cohort is simply a closed set.

Depth

Does depth prove I held it the whole time?

No. It proves the outpoint has not moved. Keys can be sold off chain and the chain would look identical. An attestation adds that someone with the key can still sign today. Neither proves continuity of a person.

If I buy an artifact, do I get its depth?

No. Buying moves the carrier, and moving resets depth to zero. You get the id, the founding flag, and every ring, including the seller's. The current stretch starts fresh for you.

Can I move an artifact without resetting it?

No on chain method exists. Handing over the private key would preserve depth, but then you have to trust that the seller kept no copy. The protocol cannot see or verify that arrangement.

Does an exchange deposit reset depth?

Yes, twice. The deposit spends your carrier, and the exchange later spends it again into its own wallet. Do not deposit an artifact carrier anywhere custodial.

Does receiving more coins to the same address change anything?

No. New outputs are separate outpoints. The carrier is untouched.

What is the difference between depth and a ring?

Depth is the live stretch, and it is growing right now. A ring is a finished stretch, written when the carrier was spent. Rings never change and they never add up into a total. The public depth page shows a cut section with both on it.

Is there anything above Elder?

No. Elder is the last tier at 210000 blocks. Above that the depth number keeps rising and the tier stays Elder.

Risk

Can I lose my bitcoin by minting?

Every documented failure leaves your coins in outputs you control. You can lose fees, you can lose a claim, and you can lose a stretch. Losing coins requires losing a key or sending them somewhere, which is ordinary Bitcoin risk and not specific to this protocol.

My reveal failed. What now?

Look up the reason code in GET /patina/invalid-events, then read Reason codes and When something goes wrong. Most failures mean starting again with a new salt and a new commit.

I spent my carrier by accident. Can you restore it?

No. Nobody can. There is no admin key, no rollback, and no support override. The ring recording your stretch is permanent, and the artifact continues from wherever it landed.

Can you freeze or seize my artifact?

No. It is an unspent output controlled by your key. The only levers an operator has are over their own servers. See Incident actions.

What if you disappear?

Your artifact does not. It is derived from the blockchain by rules that are published, with golden vectors and byte examples anyone can reproduce. Someone else can run an indexer, and so can you. The public site walks through checking an artifact without us, starting from a block explorer.

What if two indexers disagree?

One of them has a bug and it matters. Compare state roots at the same height, bisect to the first differing block, and follow Report a disagreement. We publish disagreements rather than resolving them quietly.

Practical

Can I use a hardware wallet?

For holding the carrier, yes. For the reveal, you need a signer that can perform a Taproot script path spend revealing a specific leaf, which most consumer devices and wallets do not expose. See Wallet setup.

Do I need to run anything to keep my artifact?

No. Leave the carrier unspent. That is the whole obligation. Indexers, servers, and websites are for reading state, not for holding it.

Is my address public?

The carrier outpoint is on the blockchain, so it is as public as any Bitcoin output. Anyone can look up which address it pays. The indexer adds no privacy and takes none away.

Do I have to sign attestations?

No. They are optional, free, and repeatable. An artifact without one is not suspicious.

Why are there no dates anywhere?

Because the protocol has no clock. Heights are exact, checkable, and the same for everyone. Any calendar time you see here is converted from blocks at ten minutes each and labelled as an estimate.

Is PATINA an NFT?

It shares the idea of a unique on chain object and shares nothing else. There is no mint price, no supply cap, no marketplace, no royalty, and no image required for it to exist. The state is the artifact, and any picture is a view of it.