MATINS
Matins is the office sung in the dark before dawn — the watch kept until the light arrives. Four thousand four hundred and forty-four engravings, struck on parchment to mark the first light of Arc.
Vision
Arc was built for money that moves — settlement, payments, institutions. It is not a chain that expects art.
That is exactly why its first light deserves a record.
Every consequential beginning has been recorded by hand. Not announced, not posted — recorded, by someone who sat with it long enough to draw it. A ledger opening, a charter signed, a gate raised: somebody inked the moment onto a sheet and the sheet outlived everyone involved.
Matins is that sheet. It does not explain Arc and it does not promise anything about it. It marks the hour, the way the office that gives the collection its name marks the hour before dawn — sung in the dark, by the same hands that copied manuscripts by candlelight.
Mission
Record, don't announce
The work is an artifact, not a campaign. It carries a date, a number and a hand — and nothing it cannot keep.
Draw it, don't prompt it
No diffusion model touched this collection. Every line is a computed pen stroke, every sheet of parchment a stack of filters. It is generative art in the older sense: rules that draw, not a model that guesses.
Mark the ones who were there
The people who show up on day one of a network rarely have anything to show for it afterwards. A folio is a durable, transferable mark of having been present at the opening.
Leave the method open
The generator is deterministic: a folio number in, the same drawing out, forever. Once the collection is revealed, the source that draws it is published, so anyone can verify their plate was never touched by hand.
The art
Every line is a pen stroke that was calculated, not sampled.
A drawn line is never straight and never uniform. So each contour here is traced twice at different weights and opacities — the way a real nib re-inks a line — over control points that wander. The whole plate then passes through a turbulence field that warps it the way a hand warps a ruler.
The parchment is built the same way. Mottling, fibres, foxing spots, the crease of a folded sheet, a torn deckle edge: all of it is generated, none of it photographed. Shading is done in broken hatch strokes, the way an engraver shades — thousands of short cuts, never a gradient.
Ten traits
| Trait | Values |
|---|---|
| Parchment | Vellum · Aged Vellum · Scorched · Sea-Stained · Palimpsest |
| Ink | Iron Gall · Sepia · Oak Brown · Verdigris · Cinnabar |
| Form | Stone Gate · Aqueduct · Broken Arch · Twin Arc · Celestial Bow |
| Sky | Hatched Dawn · Crosshatch Night · Gathering Storm · Open Sky · Eclipse |
| Luminary | Sun in Splendour · Waning Moon · Comet · Twin Stars · None |
| Border | Double Rule · Key Pattern · Vine · Plain Rule |
| Seal | Crimson Wax · Black Wax · Gold Leaf · Unsealed |
| Marginalia | Scribed Notes · Cipher Column · Corner Sketch · Bare Margin |
| Condition | Clean · Light Foxing · Heavy Foxing · Water Damage |
| Hand | Master Hand · Journeyman · Hurried Hand |
Hand is the one that changes how a folio is drawn rather than what it contains. A Master Hand keeps a steady line; a Hurried Hand wavers. Same pen, different discipline.
The mint
Four stages, on OpenSea.
Arc settles gas in USDC, so USDC is simply the price — no approvals, no wrapped token, one transaction.
| Stage | Folios | Price | Per wallet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Team | 111 | Free | — |
| GTD allowlist | 1,333 | Free | Allocated |
| FCFS allowlist | 2,000 | 3 USDC | 2 |
| Public | 1,000 | 5 USDC | 5 |
| Total | 4,444 |
Anything the allowlist stages leave unminted rolls forward into the public stage. Nothing is burned and the supply never rises.
The reveal
Sealed for one week.
Every folio mints sealed — the same folded sheet, held shut by wax, with the engraving on the other side faintly soaking through the parchment. One week after the mint closes, the seals break and all 4,444 plates take their form.
The full collection is pinned to IPFS before a single folio is minted, so the art is public from the start. What stays unknown is the mapping — which token holds which folio — and that is fixed by an offset published at the reveal.
Nothing is drawn after the fact and nothing is chosen by us. The generator ran once, the sheets exist, and the week is just the wait.
Roadmap
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Phase I
The Watch now
The collection is finished: 4,444 plates drawn, the sealed folio struck, the traits fixed. Allowlist applications open. Nothing is minted and no date is set.
-
Phase II
First Light
The mint opens on OpenSea once Arc is supported there, and not before. Team, GTD, FCFS, then public. The schedule is announced when the day is real — we would rather be late than announce a date we do not control.
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Phase III
The Opening
One week after the mint closes, the seals break. Every folio resolves to its plate and the trait distribution becomes public in full.
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Phase IV
The Scriptorium
The generator is open-sourced so every plate can be reproduced from its number and verified as untouched. A small printed edition follows, struck on real paper for holders of the rarest forms.
There is no token, no staking and no second collection on this roadmap. If that changes it will be because holders asked for it, not because a roadmap promised it.
Allowlist
Two ways in.
GTD is a guaranteed allocation: 1,333 folios, free, reserved against your address. Every GTD spot is held until its stage closes.
FCFS is 2,000 folios at 3 USDC, first come first served among approved addresses, two per wallet. Being approved does not guarantee a folio — it guarantees you a place in the queue.
Applications are read by a person. Ecosystem contribution counts for more than follower counts, and an empty answer is a declined answer.
Questions
Why is there no mint date?
Because it is not ours to set. The mint runs on OpenSea, and OpenSea does not support Arc yet. The collection is finished and waiting; the schedule is published the day that changes. We would rather hold than announce a date that depends on somebody else's roadmap.
Is this AI art?
No. No diffusion model, no image generator, no prompt. The drawing is produced by a program that computes pen strokes — jittered control points, doubled contours, broken hatch shading — and generates the parchment as layered filters. The same folio number always produces the same plate, and the source will be published so that can be verified.
What does it cost, and in what?
5 USDC public, 3 USDC for FCFS, free for GTD. Arc settles gas in USDC, so USDC is the native currency of the chain — there is no approval step and no wrapped token involved. One transaction.
What happens in the sealed week?
Nothing you need to do. Every folio shows the same sealed sheet until one week after the mint closes, then all 4,444 resolve to their plates at once. The art is already pinned and public before the mint — only the mapping between token and folio is withheld, and it is fixed by an offset published at the reveal.
How are allowlist spots decided?
By reading the applications. What you have built, shipped or contributed in the Arc ecosystem counts; follower counts do not. GTD is the smaller and stricter of the two lists.
What are the royalties?
5%, declared on-chain through ERC-2981 so every marketplace reads the same number.