Chartifacts
A tokenized musical notation chart, usually from a recording session, that has been turned into an NFT to memorialize the player, the music, and the charts that were used in the creation of the song/ album.
The particular song, solo, verse, chorus, etc can be sponsored by an individual that loves of that piece of music or player and can digitally represent it in their wallets as well as our archives.
History
some of the chartifacts contain a rare organic compound known as Foldgers... some of it can be seen as stains on certain pieces, making it exponentially more valuable.
Design history
The design for chartifacts was first written down as issues on the cryptograss/chartifacts GitHub repository (created April 2024; the repository has no code, only issues). All of these are by Justin Holmes:[unverified]
- #1 Chartifact basics (18 May 2024): a secret goes on the paper chart; metadata about the chart and its relationship to the song and the artists goes on chain. Once a chart is sold, a clock starts: at the 1-year and 5-year marks, an automatic auction opens at 5× the official sale price. Chartifacts are meant to work with an embedded player.[unverified]
- #2 The secret: leaning toward a string of the form "personal message, entropic string", hashed, with the digest committed to the contract; whoever knows the input can prove ownership. Further secrets can be committed by later owners, so the paper builds up a custody trail.[unverified]
- #3 Artisan hash digests: premium digests ground until the hash shows something meaningful, such as chords from the song or part of a session musician's name, perhaps computed somewhere that matters to fans, like the studio.[unverified]
- #4 "Same sheet" chartifacts: several chartifacts can be on one piece of paper. A buyer can take the whole sheet, or an owner can pass on the A and C parts while keeping the B-part solo.[unverified]
- #5 Chartifact sower: an object pre-filled with a chartifact's metadata that lets someone mint it, for example a fan at a small gathering after a session who writes their own entropy (and so their own digest) on the chart.[unverified]
- #6 Chartifact reaper: on a sale, part of the price goes to the original author, the session artist, the DAO and the original (or every past) bearer. The right to name the artist's payout address is itself an object, the reaper, which the artist can sell for money up front.[unverified]
Later milestones:[unverified]
- September 2025: each solo on a 4masks track can be sponsored as an ERC-721 chartifact, often with the paper chart the musician used in the studio as the bearer instrument; owners are listed in the player. The player was built under the name "Chartifacts Player" and later renamed Rabbithole.[unverified]
- December 2025: no chartifact contract exists; the player shows placeholder ownership.[unverified]
- February 2026: a purchase-interface mockup for the 4masks page, with disabled "Coming Soon" buttons.[unverified]
- October 2026: the chartifacts Mood opens; 30 photos of the Tunesmith and Proximity session charts are gathered for upload. As of block 26,310,514, still no contract has been written.[unverified]
Related open issues on arthel: #292, #306, #307, #341.[unverified]
