How Talismans Work

Two poles — matter and event — mint into 1,536 talismans; four reversible operations rearrange their cores, never minting or destroying one, forging the Mythic and letting the count breathe while the collection stays conserved and recoverable.

Talismans is a collection of on-chain amulets — a fixed genesis of 1,536 unique tokens at the mint, struck as two poles in balance: matter and event. Myth, the third essence, is never minted — holders forge it by crossing the two. The count then fluctuates as holders transform them. Each Talisman is a set of one to eight cores; its material, form, and look are all derived from that set. Four reversible operations rearrange those cores without ever creating or destroying one — so the cores are conserved and the collection is always recoverable.

Minting

A genesis of 1,536. First, up to 36 artist proofs are minted. The remaining 1,500 are sold — first through the allowlist sale, then to the public. The public sale is time-capped: when it closes, any tokens still unsold are minted to the artist, so the mint always completes to 1,536. This is the genesis figure, not a permanent supply cap: the live token count moves afterwards (see Transformations).

Each mint draws 1–4 cores, at random. A mint is sealed by commit–reveal: you commit first, and the result is derived from a later block's randomness — so no one can see or cherry-pick the outcome beforehand. The reveal draws a single material and form and 1–4 distinct cores, so a freshly minted Talisman is always homogeneous. How many cores you draw is random, on these odds:

Raw: 1 core 40%
Cut: 2 cores 30%
Fine: 3 cores 20%
Prime: 4 cores 10%

On average a mint yields 2 cores — fewer cores are common, more cores are a higher tier and a rarer draw.

Phases. Minting runs in stages: a small premint of artist proofs, an allowlist early-access window (up to 2 per wallet), then an open public sale with no per-wallet limit, and finally a close where any remainder is minted to the artist. Exact prices and times are on the home page.

The three essences

Every core belongs to one of three essences. Two are natural poles; the third is their synthesis and is never minted directly. Genesis mints only the two poles, in balance — about 768 of matter and 768 of event — and every Mythic is forged across them.

Lithic — matter. A natural pole, 16 materials.
Lumic — event. The other natural pole, 16 materials.
Mythic — myth. Not minted; a token becomes Mythic only when its cores span both poles. Crossing matter and event is the sole path to myth.

Lithic and Lumic together synthesise the Mythic.

A Talisman's displayed material, form, and seed are pure functions of its cores — identity is derived, never assigned. And because every core carries its own entropy, no two cores coincide: every Talisman is one of a kind.

Transformations

Four operations rearrange cores between tokens. They form two reversible pairs on two independent axes — and none ever creates or destroys a core.

— Bond ⇄ Cleave (across the poles). Bond fuses a matter token and an event token of equal size into a Mythic — one fewer token. Cleave splits a Mythic back into its matter and event piles — one more token.
— Cut ⇄ Merge (along the tier, within one material). Cut splits a token into two of the same material and form — one more token. Merge recombines two of the same material and form, up to the four-core ceiling — one fewer token.

Opposite poles fuse into a Mythic — and split back.

One token splits in two — and merges back.

What holds true

— Conservation. The total number of cores never changes; operations only move cores around.
— Reversibility. Cleave exactly undoes Bond, and Merge exactly undoes Cut.
— Bounded live supply. Cut raises the token count, Bond and Merge lower it. Because cores are conserved, the count drifts but stays bounded — up to the total cores minted (about 2×1,536). 1,536 is a mint figure, not a live cap.
— Closed space. No operation invents a material or form that couldn't have been minted. Tier (Raw → Cut → Fine → Prime) tracks a token's core count; a Prime Mythic is the eight-core ceiling.

Staged rollout

Each transformation begins with training wheels — the contract owner (the Talismans deployer/admin, not token holders) can enable it and still switch it back off — and can later be permanently frozen on, after which no one, the contract owner included, can ever disable it.

Bond and Cleave are on from the start — live even during allowlist minting. They are core to the design: Bond is the only path across the poles, so it's how every Mythic is forged — without it the third essence could never be discovered. They also never inflate the collection: Bond combines two tokens into one, and Cleave only puts back what Bond joined, so the live count can never exceed what was minted.

Cut and Merge launch disabled. Because Cut multiplies the live token count, they stay off through the mint and at launch, then arrive as the design's next layer: tier mobility — resizing tokens so any matter and event pair can be matched and bonded, opening the full range of Mythics. They're opt-in: intended to switch on down the road. The collection is whole from day one with Bond and Cleave; Cut and Merge complete the space when they arrive.

Fully on-chain

Talismans are fully on-chain. The artwork, the metadata, and the operations that transform them are all smart-contract code and state — there is no server, database, or off-chain file anywhere in the loop.

Decentralised by design. Because everything lives on-chain, a Talisman depends on no single party. This website is just one convenient way in — and, like any interface, it will eventually go away. The collection won't: anyone can read and transform Talismans straight from the contract.

Disclaimer

This page is a plain-language description of the Talismans algorithm and its intended design. The deployed smart contracts are the single source of truth.

Treat every figure here — genesis size, prices, artist proofs, timings, allowlist rules, and the staged rollout of transformations — as descriptive and subject to change until launch. This document can drift from the actual deployment; nothing on it is a promise, an offer, or financial advice, and optional, opt-in features may or may not be enabled. Always verify on-chain before relying on any detail.

Once the contracts are deployed their addresses will be published here, so anyone can cross-reference this description against the verified on-chain code.