Patina

A Bitcoin artifact

It deepens for every block it does not move.

One Bitcoin output carries it. The number of blocks that output has survived is its depth, and any node on earth computes the same figure.

  • What it is

    An artifact that rides on one unspent output, called the carrier. Depth counts the blocks since that output was created.

  • What moving costs

    Spending the carrier destroys it, so depth returns to zero. The stretch that just ended is engraved as a ring and stays in the record forever.

  • What you can own

    A Firstlight Seal, from the founding cohort. They can only be claimed inside one window of 4032 blocks. After it closes, no new Seal can exist.

See what a Firstlight Seal is Read the specification

Specimen, cut section

Simulated
A PATINA artifact drawn as a cut section A cut section at depth 12 960 blocks, tier Verdigris. No stretch has closed yet, so there are no rings.
Depth
12 960 blocks, about 90 days
Tier
Verdigris
13 320 blocks to Umber
Rings engraved
none yet

Simulated blocks, running fast so a whole life fits in a minute. Nothing here describes a real artifact, and no live figure appears on this page unless an indexer answers for it.

01 What one block changes

Nothing happens, and that is the point.

No transaction is broadcast. No fee is paid. No contract ticks over. A block arrives, the carrier is still unspent, and the subtraction gets one larger.

How depth is computed
depth = current_block_height - carrier_creation_height
Depth
12 960 blocks
Elapsed
about 90 days
Tier
Verdigris
Next tier
Umber
Blocks to next
13 320
Time to next
about 92 days

Every elapsed figure on this page is an estimate at ten minutes per block, which is a target and not a promise. Real blocks arrive faster or slower. A real artifact's depth is exact, because it counts blocks and never minutes.

RAW SHEEN CAST VERDIGRIS UMBER BRONZE OXIDE ELDER DEPTH, BLOCKS SINCE THE CARRIER WAS CREATED
The column is the current stretch. It is scaled one equal band per tier rather than linearly in blocks, because Raw through Verdigris would otherwise share the bottom seven percent of it. 12 960 blocks

02 The tier journey

Eight names for how far an output has come.

A tier is a band of depth. It is not a rank anyone grants, not a benefit, and not a claim about value. It is a word for a number, so the number becomes something you can say out loud.

  1. Raw

    Fresh metal. The carrier exists and nothing has happened to it yet.

    0 blocksfrom the start

    Passed

  2. Sheen

    The first mark. A week of not touching something is longer than most people manage.

    1 008 blocksabout 7 days

    Passed

  3. Cast

    Set. The same length as the entire founding window, spent standing still.

    4 032 blocksabout 28 days

    Passed

  4. Verdigris

    The surface has turned. A quarter of a year of decisions not to spend.

    12 960 blocksabout 90 days

    Held now

  5. Umber

    Darkened through. Half a year through fee spikes, price moves and second thoughts.

    26 280 blocksabout 182 days

    13 320 blocks away

  6. Bronze

    A full year on one outpoint. The wallet has been opened and closed again without touching this.

    52 560 blocksabout 1 year

    Ahead

  7. Oxide

    Two years. Long enough that the reason it was left alone has become a habit.

    105 120 blocksabout 2 years

    Ahead

  8. Elder

    The last tier. Roughly one halving of a single output going nowhere.

    210 000 blocksabout 4 years

    Ahead

Every tier, with its material and its arithmetic

03 Move or remain

What resets, and what can never be taken back.

This is the one thing people get wrong. Depth belongs to the output, not to you. When the output goes, the depth goes with it. The record of what that output achieved does not.

The carrier stays unspent

Depth continues

h h+1 h+2 h+3 h+4 one carrier output, never spent
  • Depthgrows by one each block
  • Ringsunchanged
  • Endowmentstill yours, still spendable
  • Tierclimbs when a threshold is passed

The carrier is spent

Depth returns to zero

SPEND depth 2 depth 0 stretch closes successor, new
  • Depthback to zero on the successor
  • Ringsone more, engraved forever
  • Endowmentwhatever you sent onward
  • Tierback to Raw

Reset on move is not a rule anyone enforces

It is inherited. Spending an output destroys it, and a destroyed output has no age. There is no administrator who can decide your depth survived a transfer, because there is nothing left to decide about.

That is the whole trick. The scarce thing is not a supply number. It is the decision not to touch something.

A ring is what a stretch leaves behind

When a carrier is spent, the record gains a ring: the height it started, the height it ended, its depth, and the value it carried. Rings are appended and never edited.

An artifact sitting at depth 40 today can still carry a ring from a stretch of four years. Low depth now says nothing about what it has already done.

Take an artifact apart, part by part

04 What ownership means

Two artifacts can start together and end up nothing alike.

Mint two on the same day and they are identical. A year later one has a single unbroken stretch and the other has four rings and a fresh start. Neither can be turned into the other.

Depth proves

That the outpoint has not moved. Anyone can check that against a Bitcoin node with no trust in us at all. Pair it with a signed attestation over the artifact id and a recent block hash, and you also know the key is alive.

Depth does not prove

That the same person held it the whole time. Keys can be sold off chain, and the chain cannot see that. Depth is a fact about an output, not a biography of a person.

Two more things we would rather say ourselves than have you discover.

  • Founding membership can be concentrated. Anyone willing to park real bitcoin can claim as many Firstlight Seals as they can fund. There is no cap and no limit per person, because the protocol has no idea what a person is. Concentration figures are published live during the window rather than after it.
  • Buying an artifact moves it. A purchase spends the carrier, so depth resets to zero and the stretch you paid for closes as a ring. You inherit the record, not the depth.

The full risk list is a page of its own, not a footnote.

05 The genesis asset

Firstlight Seals open once and never again.

One cohort. One commit window of 4032 blocks, about four weeks at ten minutes per block. Zero team allocation, zero reserve, zero price, no supply cap.

Claiming uses an aged commit and reveal. Your commit output has to be at least 144 blocks old before you can reveal it, and only you can spend it. That is why a claim cannot be sniped: watching the mempool tells a sniper nothing they can act on.

The supply is whatever the window produced. We are not going to pretend that number was designed.

What a Firstlight Seal is How the claim works

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.

Window state

Live

Checking for a connected indexer.

06 How the mint works

Commit, wait 144 blocks, reveal.

Two Bitcoin transactions with a gap between them. The gap is what makes the claim safe, and it is the only thing you have to plan around.

  1. Before anything Prepare A taproot wallet that can spend a script path, and at least 100 000 sats of your own bitcoin ready to sit still.
  2. Transaction one Commit Publish one taproot output holding a hidden commitment to your key and a random salt. It reveals nothing while it waits.
  3. At least 144 blocks Wait Roughly a day. A reveal any earlier is rejected with SEED_COMMIT_TOO_YOUNG and the claim does not happen.
  4. Transaction two Reveal Spend the commit, publish the marker, and name which output becomes the carrier. Depth starts counting at this height.
Walk through the mint, step by step The operator level walkthrough

07 Check it yourself

Every claim on this site is one you can refuse to take our word for.

Depth is a subtraction between two block heights. You can do it on your own node, with no software of ours anywhere in the answer.

Read a carrier's depth from Bitcoin Core 
bitcoin-cli gettxout <carrier_txid> <carrier_vout>
# confirmations is the depth, exactly, with no interpretation layer involved

Recompute the identity

An artifact id is one SHA-256 over a domain tag, the reveal txid in wire order, and the carrier index. No secrets, no server.

Replay the state

The golden vectors carry a state root at every height. Two indexers that agree on the root agree on everything.

Run the index

The reducer is a pure function of confirmed blocks and one deployment record. Anyone can run it and get the same answer.

The full verification page Golden vectors and state roots

08 Go deeper

Pick the door that matches what you came for.