Art or money?

1 The work

Art or money? Exchange is a networked artwork exploring how value is made, held and exchanged. Credits are source works generated from payment records. Statements are compositions of those works. Balance is their material in circulation: a wallet’s quantity and inherited colors become its artwork.

Collectors decide what to keep, compose and exchange. Sending Balance changes the sender’s artwork and the recipient’s artwork. The work exists across their connected holdings, rather than in a single image. Onchain records show actions and quantities, not the identities or motives behind them.

Limited supply, divisibility and transferability make money and the storage of value part of the experiment. Whether people use Balance that way, and whether it preserves purchasing power, remain open questions. A rating measures the work’s material; a market price records what someone will exchange for it.

80 Credits → one Statement → one BALANCE per rating point. Each step is optional; composition and conversion are irreversible.

→Compose

→Surrender

Credit #1, Statement #1 and Balance #3 shown as examples, not a single conversion history. Balance is a captured local-rehearsal contract output. Composition burns 80 Credits; surrender permanently locks the Statement and releases its rating in Balance.

2 Credits and Statements

The origin of Credits

Credits began with $8 payments through X Money. Each eligible payment left a receipt: a transaction ID and a settlement time. Those records became the raw material for an individual artwork. The trace of an exchange became something that could itself be collected and exchanged.

The original project describes Credits as an artwork made from acts of trust. Its name draws on the Latin credere: to believe, to trust. Each Credit gives a payment a lasting visual form, with its pattern and colors determined by the transaction’s data.

That origin carries through the system. Collectors can keep the individual images, compose them into Statements, or surrender those compositions to release Balance. The work moves from a record of payment to an image, then into a material whose circulation creates further images in holders’ wallets.

The edition and its compositions

The original sealed edition contained 122,154 Credits. No further Credits can be minted; burns reduce the number that remain. Transaction identifiers generate four 8 × 8 printing plates; timestamps select combinations of cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Fixed, edition-derived rarity weights give each Credit a rating from 80 to 800, with four decimal places. Rating is an accounting measure, not a price or appraisal.

Composing a Statement burns 80 Credits and preserves their information in the collector’s chosen order on an 8 × 10 page. Its rating is the sum of those Credits’ ratings. The original edition could produce at most 1,526 Statements, with 74 Credits outside complete groups. Standalone Credit burns can reduce that attainable maximum; overprints reduce the number of surviving Statements. This maximum is not the number currently available to collect.

Owners can select registered rendering formats without changing the rating. The format registry can accept additions until sealed; existing registered renderers cannot be replaced.

Overprinting combines two Statements. The base keeps its ID; the other is burned. Their ratings add and their ink combines. From the eighth constituent page, the Statement uses black paper. Overlapping marks preserve occupied ink positions, not a count of every printing layer.

3 Conversion and supply

Surrendering a Statement permanently locks it and releases its rating in BALANCE from an existing token reserve. A rating of 53,171.2626 releases 53,171.2626 BALANCE. The token uses eighteen decimals; the conversion rate remains one unit per point. Approval alone does not convert a Statement. Use the conversion function: direct NFT transfers do not release tokens.

Validly surrendered Statements display WITHDRAWN. They can subsequently be combined into a locked cumulative Statement without releasing more tokens. Its score counts the withdrawals merged so far. BALANCE cannot be redeemed for a surrendered Statement.

The edition’s ratings total 53,752,386.7072. Before launch funding, the creator completed a one-time retirement of 2,386.7072 BALANCE released from artwork bought on the open market:

53,752,386.7072 − 2,386.7072 = 53,750,000 BALANCE

The reduction came from the creator’s converted holdings, not other collectors’ entitlements. 53,750,000 BALANCE is the fixed total supply after retirement, including unreleased reserve. Later conversions release existing reserve tokens; they do not increase total supply. There is no further mint path. The creator’s launch allocation came from converted works, with no separate creator mint.

Total supply is not circulating supply: unassembled Credits, inaccessible holdings and collectors choosing not to convert can leave tokens unreleased. The percentage released in Exchange compares converted Balance, less the retirement, with the fixed total. It does not measure tokens available for sale or cash available to holders. Tokens sent back to the reserve remain locked and do not restore conversion rights.

Public conversion and ordinary transfers are now open. The creator-only conversion period ended with retirement; the transfer gate opened at the auction-end block, 26,241,565. A narrowly scoped recovery path covers accidentally deposited Statements without issuance receipts; Statements that released BALANCE cannot be recovered.

4 The wallet artwork

An address’s first positive receipt automatically creates a wallet-bound ERC-721, named Balance #1, Balance #2, and so on in first-receipt order. No separate mint or claim is needed. It stays with the address when the balance reaches zero and updates if tokens return. It cannot be transferred or approved for transfer.

The artwork uses Receipt pixel numerals on a white 4:5 page, with a CMYK composition underline. Displayed balances are truncated to two decimals: zero is 0, and a positive balance below 0.01 is <0.01. Exact quantities remain available onchain. The SVG and metadata are generated onchain without an external image or font dependency.

There is one artwork per eligible address, not per person. Smart contracts and pools receive artworks too; the reserve is excluded. Wallet artworks have no fixed edition count: new addresses can receive existing Balance and acquire an artwork without creating more tokens. The count of artworks ever created differs from the count of wallets with a positive balance today. Exchange’s holder count excludes reserve and pool infrastructure. Marketplace discovery and image refreshes may lag.

Collect Balance in the Exchange interface opens Uniswap for a selected quantity of existing BALANCE. Buying transfers tokens; it does not mint more tokens or convert a Statement. An address receiving Balance for the first time gets its artwork automatically. Subsequent receipts and transfers update the same artwork. The interface preview is illustrative; the wallet’s actual colors depend on the material it receives.

The metadata records Balance, four ink percentages, First received, Transfers in, Transfers out, Statements converted, Peak balance, Times emptied and Returns from zero. Percentages are truncated and may sum to slightly less than 100%; all are zero for an empty balance. Transfers between related wallets can influence these statistics, so they do not establish independent participation.

Both Balance states are captured contract outputs from the local rehearsal, not live mainnet tokens.

5 Color and circulation

At conversion, a Statement’s occupied CMYK plate bits determine its released tokens’ color proportions. Each wallet tracks four quantities whose sum equals its released balance:

C + M + Y + K = BALANCE

Transfers carry a proportional share of the sender’s mixture. If a wallet holds 100 BALANCE comprising 80 cyan and 20 magenta, sending 25 moves 20 cyan and 5 magenta. The recipient combines those quantities with its existing colors. Integer rounding preserves the transferred total.

Color records aggregate ancestry, not individual token or Statement identity. It does not decay with time, and unsolicited transfers can change a wallet’s mixture.

Colors follow actual custody addresses. Uniswap v4’s shared PoolManager combines BALANCE held for multiple pools into one mixture; it does not preserve separate color histories for each pool or liquidity provider. Internal exchange accounting changes no colors until BALANCE actually moves between addresses.

6 Launch and liquidity

The Uniswap Continuous Clearing Auction ran on Ethereum from October 20 to October 21, 2026. It offered 0.5% of final supply, with another 0.5% reserved for opening liquidity. Both allocations came from converted creator-owned artwork within the fixed supply.

The verified bidding window was block 26,234,365 → 26,241,565. The auction reached its final checkpoint, allocated all 268,750 BALANCE and recorded 54.9503 ETH raised (rounded). Its final clearing price was 0.000227 ETH per BALANCE; this is a historical auction figure, not a current trading quote or the price paid by every bid.

The launch floor was 0.00001 ETH per BALANCE, with a minimum raise of approximately 2.6875 ETH. Bids specified budgets and maximum prices. Allocation, refunds and claims follow the auction rules. Settlement and claims remain individual wallet actions; a completed auction does not establish that every participant has claimed.

Claims and ordinary transfers opened at block 26,241,565. Liquidity migration completed at block 26,241,566 in a separate mainnet transaction. The resulting ETH/BALANCE pool uses Uniswap v4 with a 0.3% swap fee, tick spacing 30 and the launch strategy’s supported fallback hook.

The launch allocated 100% of available auction proceeds to full-range liquidity, using the reserved BALANCE. The resulting position NFT, #476269, is held by the permanent liquidity lock and had positive liquidity at the verification block below. The lock has no principal-withdrawal, position-transfer or upgrade path. This does not prevent swaps from changing the pool’s ETH and BALANCE quantities.

Accrued position fees and loose migration refunds are payable only to the fixed creator wallet, 0xc8f8e2F59Dd95fF67c3d39109ecA2e2A017D4c8a. Anyone can pay gas to collect fees to that recipient. Fees are not automatically reinvested, and BALANCE holders have no entitlement to them. These are the deployed rules, regardless of any proposed future fee policy or additional liquidity.

7 Participation and risk

BALANCE is a conceptual artwork. No financial return, buyer, resale price or exit liquidity is guaranteed. You may lose everything you spend and be unable to sell. Holding it gives no ownership in the artist’s business, entitlement to revenue or profits, or fractional ownership of surrendered Statements.

Existing Credits and Statements represent additional releasable Balance beyond the auction allocation, within the fixed total supply. Their holders can convert and sell, including into liquidity funded by auction proceeds. Auction buyers can also resell. The 99% outside the launch allocation was not all circulating at launch; the remaining conversion rights still matter to buyers.

Conversion creates no ETH. Permanently locking the LP does not stop sellers receiving pool ETH through swaps or protect the price. A displayed price multiplied by supply is not cash available to holders. Actual proceeds depend on demand, depth, price impact, fees and execution.

The software is experimental. Bugs, exploits, configuration errors and service failures can cause irreversible loss. Testing does not guarantee safety. Bots and transaction ordering can affect execution; failed transactions can still cost gas. Third-party wrappers and premarket projects make their own promises, not promises by BALANCE.

Read the participation terms before collecting, converting or trading. Applicable rights and remedies are not replaced by these disclosures.

8 A finished artwork

BALANCE launched as a finished conceptual artwork. Its defining conversion, supply and transfer rules are encoded in the deployed contracts. There is no roadmap or commitment to future features, upgrades or continued development. Optional future work should not form the basis of a purchase.

Finished rules do not mean a static image. Holders continue to compose, convert and exchange, changing the work’s distribution and appearance. The website, explanatory diagrams and tools can evolve around those rules. The Statements format registry remains open to additions until sealed.

Continued website hosting, maintenance and third-party availability are not guaranteed. Onchain records are separate from website availability; using other interfaces may require technical knowledge.

9 Status and verification

As of October 23, 2026, Credits, Statements, BALANCE and the wallet artwork are live on Ethereum mainnet. Creator retirement and launch funding are complete. Public conversion and transfers are open, the auction has reached its final checkpoint, and the launch liquidity position has been created and locked.

This revision checks the deployed Balance, wallet-artwork, renderer and permanent-lock runtime hashes against the deployment record. At finalized block 26,257,068, total supply was 53,750,000 BALANCE, retirement was complete, the auction’s last checkpoint equaled its end block, and position #476269 was owned by the permanent lock with positive liquidity. The actual migration receipt and pool identity were also verified. This is a dated verification, not continuous monitoring or a new security audit.

Use Exchange for changing supply, holder and market figures. The diagram is schematic: its branches illustrate composition and circulation, not an exact count of owners or a map of individual transfers. The original and maximum supplies remain distinct from current counts. Archived plans and local rehearsals document preparation; they do not override the mainnet contracts and receipts.

Sources

• Credits: the original project and payment-to-artwork process
• Credits contract
• Statements contract
• BALANCE contract
• Wallet artwork contract
• Permanent liquidity lock
• Auction contract
• Launch funding receipt
• Liquidity migration receipt
• Locked liquidity position #476269
• Verification block 26,257,068
• Uniswap shared PoolManager