Whitepaper / Jack Butcher / Visualize Value
- Credits
- Statements
- Balances
What is art? What is money?
Exchange explores the boundary between an image we keep and a quantity we exchange. The same work can be held as an individual mark, composed into a history, or divided and circulated. What changes when we choose to look at it, keep it, or spend it?
One artwork. Three forms: Credits, Statements and Balances.
1 The work
Exchange is an artwork about chance, choice and consequence. Credits give payment records an image. Statements let collectors compose those images and accumulate their histories. Balances makes their accumulated rating divisible and transferable: a wallet’s quantity and inherited colors become its artwork.
Collectors can keep a particular image, compose a page or release its quantity into circulation. These choices change the work’s form and distribution. The records show actions and quantities, not the identities or motives behind them.
| Form | What it represents | What changes it |
|---|---|---|
| Credits | Individual ERC-721 artworks with fixed ratings | Transfer or composition |
| Statements | ERC-721 compositions of 80 Credits | Format selection, overprinting or conversion |
| Balances | Transferable ERC-20 units and a wallet-bound ERC-721 artwork | Conversion, transfers and color mixing |
80 Credits → one Statement → one BALANCE per rating point. Each step is optional; composition and conversion are irreversible.
80 individual artworks.
One composed page.
Divisible units · wallet artwork.
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 sealed edition contains 122,154 Credits. 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. At most 1,526 original Statements can be composed, leaving at least 74 Credits outside complete groups.
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. A one-time creator retirement burns 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 comes from the creator’s converted holdings, not other collectors’ entitlements. Later conversions release existing reserve tokens; they do not increase supply. No separate creator mint is included.
Total supply includes unreleased reserve. It is not circulating supply: unassembled Credits, inaccessible holdings and collectors choosing not to convert can leave tokens unreleased. Tokens sent back to the reserve remain locked and do not restore conversion rights.
Before retirement, only the designated creator funder can convert. After retirement, public conversion opens, while ordinary transfers remain locked until the auction ends. 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. Marketplace discovery and image refreshes may lag.
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.
10,000 Balance.
The same wallet artwork persists at zero.
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 Planned auction and liquidity
The planned Uniswap Continuous Clearing Auction offers 0.5% of final supply, with another 0.5% reserved for opening liquidity. Both come from converted creator-owned artwork within the stated supply.
| Destination | BALANCE | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Auction | 268,750 | 0.5% |
| Opening liquidity reserve | 268,750 | 0.5% |
| Outside the launch allocation | 53,212,500 | 99% |
| Total after retirement | 53,750,000 | 100% |
The target start is October 20, 2026 at 10:20 AM Eastern, with approximately 24 hours of bidding. Final Ethereum blocks must be verified; clock times are estimates.
The approved floor is 0.00001 ETH per BALANCE. The Uniswap UI derives a minimum raise of approximately 2.6875 ETH. Bids specify a budget and maximum price; allocation and refunds follow the auction rules. Participation, settlement and claims can require separate transactions.
Claims and ordinary transfers open at the auction-end block. Liquidity migration becomes eligible one block later and requires a successful transaction. Transfers do not wait for the pool to be seeded. Only the exact creator funding route through Permit2 and the pinned LiquidityLauncher is permitted before opening.
Auction proceeds are allocated to full-range ETH/BALANCE liquidity with a 0.3% swap fee. The LP position is permanently locked against principal withdrawal through the lock contract. Accrued position fees, unsold tokens and loose migration refunds go to the fixed creator wallet. Fees are not automatically reinvested, and BALANCE holders have no entitlement to them. Failed auctions use the applicable refund and inventory-recovery paths.
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 convertible supply beyond the auction. Their holders can convert and sell after transfers open, including into liquidity funded by auction proceeds. Auction buyers can also resell. The remaining 99% is not all circulating, but its conversion rights 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 converting or bidding. Applicable rights and remedies are not replaced by these disclosures.
8 A finished artwork
BALANCE is intended to launch as a finished conceptual artwork. Its defining 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.
This describes the artwork’s scope, not completion of its launch. Required activation, settlement and migration steps remain part of the launch process. 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 this October 19 revision, Credits and Statements are live. The selected BALANCE candidate and auction have not been deployed; creator retirement has not occurred. Published predictions, test balances and rehearsal receipts are not mainnet deployment evidence.
The selected candidate is InterfaceAuctionWithdrawals with InterfacePermanentLiquidityLock. The old auction token and pending plan are retired. The supported route uses unsigned scripts for the supporting deployments and Uniswap’s UI for auction creation, with final calldata checked before signing.
Fork tests cover source composition, conversion, transfer gates, the approved auction floor, successful and failed raises, claims, refunds, LP custody and migration gas boundaries. Generated lock/token deployment bytes have also been rehearsed. These results apply to tested code and settings; final addresses, registry entries, nonce, pool state and schedule still require live verification. Tests do not establish legal clearance or eliminate operational risk.