Patina

The genesis asset

Firstlight Seals are the artifacts that go first.

Every PATINA artifact after them will be an ordinary one. These are the founding cohort, and the window that produces them opens exactly once.

  • The window

    Commits qualify for 4032 blocks, about four weeks. Reveals of those commits are accepted for a further 4032 blocks after it closes.

  • The price

    There is none. You pay Bitcoin network fees to miners and nothing to anyone here. There is no allocation, no reserve and no presale.

  • The endowment

    At least 100 000 sats of your own bitcoin, sitting in the carrier output. It stays yours and stays spendable. Spending it resets the depth.

What you can prepare now How the claim works
The Firstlight seal mark A ring cross section with a wedge cut from the top. A pale wedge of light runs down the cut to the core, and a double rim encircles the whole mark. FIRSTLIGHT
The mark exists because the cohort does, not because the protocol treats a Seal differently. After the reveal, a Seal ages by exactly the same rules as every other artifact.

01 Why it is different

Seven facts, and not one of them is a promise about value.

Everything below can be checked against the specification and the deployment record. Nothing below says a Seal will be worth anything, because nobody can honestly say that.

It is the genesis asset
Firstlight is the first asset defined under PATINA. The specification names it as the genesis asset in its opening lines, which is a fact about the document and not a marketing claim.
It is the founding cohort
An artifact is founding when its commit landed inside the window and its reveal landed before the grace period ended. That flag is set at creation and is permanent. Nothing later can add it to an artifact that did not earn it, and nothing can take it off one that did.
The window opens once
A deployment record names one opening height. There is no mechanism to reopen it, and the record ships with those heights unset until an activation authorization exists.
It lasts 4032 blocks
The window length is a frozen constant, not a setting. A deployment whose closing height is not exactly 4032 blocks after its opening height is refused.
When it closes, that is the end
After the grace period a commit made outside the window can still create an artifact, but not a founding one. It is held to the 10 000 sat floor and carries no founding flag.
There is no team allocation
No Seals are reserved, minted in advance or set aside. Every one of them comes from someone publishing two Bitcoin transactions and funding their own carrier.
The endowment stays yours
There is no timelock in the carrier output, no custody arrangement and no multisig with anyone here. Your keys spend it whenever you want, and spending it resets the depth to zero while engraving the finished stretch as a ring.

The part most projects leave out

Founding membership can be concentrated. Anyone willing to park real bitcoin can claim as many Seals as they can fund. There is no cap and no limit per person, because the protocol cannot identify a person. Concentration figures are published live during the window instead of after it, on the transparency page.

02 Where the window stands

This page will not invent an opening height.

The mainnet deployment record ships with its opening, closing and grace heights unset. Until an activation authorization exists, loading it fails on purpose, and that is the correct behaviour rather than a fault.

So there is no countdown on this page. There is no date. When a PATINA indexer is connected and the heights are configured, the panel beside this text fills itself in from that indexer and names the source it read.

This page cannot tell you whether the founding window is open, because it could not read a PATINA indexer. The opening height has not been announced here, and this page will not invent one.

How window state is derived

Window state

Live

Checking for a connected indexer.

The four window states, and what each one allows. Derived from the tip height and the deployment record, never from a clock.
State When What can happen
Pending Heights unset, or the tip is below the opening height Nothing founding. You can still get a wallet ready and fund the coins you intend to seal.
Open The tip is at or above the opening height and below the closing height A commit published now qualifies. It still has to age 144 blocks before its reveal.
Grace The tip is at or above the closing height and not past the grace end No new founding commit can qualify. Reveals of commits already made inside the window are still accepted.
Closed The tip is past the grace end No new Firstlight Seal can be created, by anyone, ever. Anything offered as a new one is not one.

03 Get ready

Everything worth doing before an opening height exists.

A claim is two transactions with at least 144 blocks between them. Almost all of the preparation can be done now, and none of it depends on knowing a date.

What your wallet has to be able to do

  • Send to and spend from taproot outputs.
  • Spend a taproot output along a script path, revealing a leaf and a control block. This is the part most wallets cannot do, and it is the one to check first.
  • Add an OP_RETURN output carrying an exact 24 byte push, without reordering the outputs.
  • Choose which output receives the change, since the marker names the carrier by index.
  • Let you keep a 16 byte salt safe between the two transactions. Lose it and the commit cannot be revealed.

The full wallet requirements

What to have ready in coins

  • At least 100 000 sats that you are willing to leave alone. This is the endowment, and it is not a payment.
  • Enough on top for two miner fees. Use the estimator below.
  • A plan for where the carrier will live, because the address that receives it is the address that has to stay untouched.

Nothing here needs an account, a signup, an email address or a waitlist. There is nothing to log into, and anyone offering early access to something is not offering it for PATINA.

Estimate the miner fees

Arithmetic, not a forecast
Commit, 154 vB
1 540 sats
Reveal, 173 vB
1 730 sats
Both, 327 vB
3 270 sats

Sizes come from the transaction shapes the protocol requires, under the assumptions listed on the mint page. Your wallet may produce slightly different sizes with more inputs or a different output type. Fee rates are yours to choose and nothing here forecasts them: check a live mempool before you sign. The 100 000 sat endowment is deliberately not included above, because it is not a fee and it is not leaving your control.

04 After the reveal

Every Seal starts its own history, and they diverge immediately.

The founding flag is the only thing the cohort shares permanently. From the reveal onward each Seal is an ordinary artifact, judged by what its owner does and does not do.

Day one

Depth zero, tier Raw, no rings, founding flag set. Every Seal in the cohort looks identical here, whatever it cost in fees.

Year one

Some are at Bronze on an unbroken stretch. Some are back at Raw with two rings behind them. Some have become relics because a spend left no eligible successor.

Year four

A handful may be Elder. Their records are no longer comparable, because a record is a sequence and not a score.

Before you decide

Buying a Seal later is not the same as claiming one. A purchase spends the carrier, so the depth resets to zero and the stretch you paid for closes as a ring. You inherit the founding flag and the record. You do not inherit the depth. Read the risks before you commit any bitcoin.

Walk through the claim The documentation on Firstlight Who holds what authority