One hundred pedestals.

Each pedestal is held by whoever last paid for it. Whoever holds one decides what stands on it: any ERC-721 on this chain that they own, from any collection, and one line of plaque. The front page is the hundred current choices. Pedestal I is centre stage.

The price

Every pedestal is always for sale. Nobody lists it and nobody can refuse. It opens at 2,000 MUSEUM (II–X at 10,000, and I at 50,000), and every time it changes hands its next price becomes 120% of what was just paid. Prices only go up.

Where the money goes

The first time a pedestal is bought, nobody held it, so the whole price is burned. After that, whenever someone takes a pedestal, 90% of what they pay goes to the holder they are buying out, in the same transaction, and 10% is burned. Since you paid 100 and get back 90% of 120, being bought out returns 108% of what you paid. That is the exit, and it happens without you doing anything.

Nothing goes to us. The contract never holds a single token: every payment goes straight from the buyer to the seller and to the dead address. It has no fee, no treasury and no withdraw function.

What stands on it

The museum never takes your NFT. It does not move, it stays in your wallet, and nothing asks for an approval on it. The pedestal only points at it, and it checks that you own it when you hang it. If you later sell it or send it away, the pedestal notices by itself and goes dark until you hang something else. Changing what is on your pedestal is free, apart from gas.

When a pedestal changes hands, the old holder's piece and plaque come down with it. The new holder hangs their own, in the same transaction if they like.

The plaque

One line: 48 characters, plain printable text. It is on chain forever in the transaction record. The site can decline to draw an image or a plaque, and will for anything vile, but it cannot change what the chain says, and it never pretends to.

The Permanent Collection

The museum does not open onto an empty room. It opens with its own collection: one hundred abstract works, drawn entirely on chain by their own contract from nothing but their catalogue number. Work No. 1 stands on pedestal I, No. 2 on II, and so on to C. There are six movements (Field, Composition, Homage, Bands, Orbits and Horizon) and eight palettes. The works have no owner, cannot be sold, and cannot change.

A work stays on view only until its pedestal is bought for the first time. The first buyer replaces it for good, and from then on the work lives in the collection, off the floor. The hang was set before the doors opened and can never be set again.

What the contract cannot do

• hold ETH. Nothing in it is payable.
• hold tokens. Every payment is buyer to seller and buyer to burn.
• touch the NFT on show.
• take a fee, lower a price, reclaim a pedestal, pause, or upgrade.

The owner key hung the opening collection, names the token once, and after that can do nothing at all.

The small print

• When you buy, you set the most you will pay, which is the price you were shown. If someone else buys it first, the price moves and your transaction fails instead of charging you more.
• You cannot buy a pedestal you already hold.
• A pedestal that gets expensive can sit with one holder for a long time. That is the game: pedestal I is meant to be hard to hold.
• If the token charges a tax on transfers, the holder being bought out receives their 90% minus that tax.

contract · 0xd73ea3865Bb911FbE488968d3977758119310D5C