The manual for art that outlasts its marketplace.
Perpetual is a permanence-first NFT marketplace. Every artwork is provably permanent, and that permanence does not depend on Perpetual. This is the full, plain-language account of the storage model, the trading desk, settlement, royalties, and the invariant that holds all of it together. Verifiable claims only, documented in full.
100%
Permanence integrity
100%
Onchain-proof coverage
268
Verified shards
64
Works archived
Art, engineered to outlast everything.
Most NFTs store the token onchain and the artwork somewhere it can quietly disappear. When a pin lapses or a server goes dark, the chain still records that you own something that no longer resolves to anything. Perpetual exists to close that gap.
The promise is narrow and exact: the artwork survives, and its survival does not depend on the operator. Ownership, provenance, and the work itself remain intact even if Perpetual disappears entirely. We claim permanence because the architecture guarantees it. We do not claim a decentralization we have not built.
To keep that honest, the system is layered. The asset and its provenance are permanent and operator-independent. Settlement is onchain. The orderbook, the indexer, and this frontend are run conventionally, centralized for speed, because their failure can lose listings and search but can never touch your art or your ownership.
Four immutable copies. One mandatory backstop.
Each token carries parallel, immutable versions of its artwork, called shards, across independent storage backends. Three add resolution and redundancy. shard 0, the onchain proof, carries the guarantee on its own.
The onchain proof. A fully onchain copy stored via the Ethereum File System (ethfs). It survives as long as Ethereum and is always a valid fallback. Mandatory for every listed token.
Content-addressed high-resolution media, referenced by CID. Fast to serve; backstopped if a pin ever lapses.
Pay-once permanent storage. An architecturally distinct, second permanence layer.
Additional permanent redundancy on the Datachain. The model is extensible: a CDN shard can be added for speed without weakening the guarantee, because shard 0 always backstops.
No token is listable unless shard0Configured(tokenId) is true and its content hash matches the record written onchain at mint. Every shard’s content is hashed, and that hash is anchored onchain, so resolution and integrity can be checked against an immutable reference.
The verification service
A read-only service continuously resolves every shard, hashes what it gets back, and compares that hash against the onchain record. It reads only public data, so anyone can run the same checks and reach the same result. The per-token Permanence Status panel on each token page surfaces this live, with every row linking to its raw source. Do not trust us; reproduce it.
Nine networks, one marketplace.
Perpetual indexes and trades across nine networks. Six are EVM chains where Forever Library deploys and permanence is native; three are non-EVM chains that are indexed and traded using their native storage. Every price is shown in the chain's own currency.
Discovery is unified. Explore, rankings, and market stats filter across all nine networks at once, so the marketplace reads as one place rather than nine. Each token carries its chain, and prices render in that chain’s native currency rather than a single normalized unit.
Permanence-native (EVM)
On these chains the full permanence model applies directly: Forever Library deploys here, and the mandatory shard 0 onchain proof is written natively.
Native currency ETH. Forever Library and settlement deploy here; permanence is native.
Native currency ETH. Forever Library and settlement deploy here; permanence is native.
Native currency POL. Forever Library and settlement deploy here; permanence is native.
Native currency ETH. Forever Library and settlement deploy here; permanence is native.
Native currency ETH. Forever Library and settlement deploy here; permanence is native.
Native currency ETH. Forever Library and settlement deploy here; permanence is native.
Native currency ETH. Forever Library and settlement deploy here; permanence is native.
Indexed and traded (non-EVM)
These chains are indexed and traded using their native storage and provenance. They participate in discovery and in cross-chain swaps, settling against the escrow bridge.
Native currency SOL. Indexed and traded with native storage.
Native currency XTZ. Indexed and traded with native storage.
Native currency FLOW. Indexed and traded with native storage.
List, offer, and swap, gaslessly.
Listings and offers are signed messages, settled onchain only when filled, so listing costs no gas. Beyond fixed price, Perpetual restores barter: the NFT-for-NFT trading OpenSea abandoned.
Fixed-price listings and offers
List a token at a fixed price, or make an offer on one that is not listed. Orders are valid onchain regardless of orderbook availability, so a sophisticated buyer could fill an order directly against the settlement contract even if the orderbook were down.
Swap types
Propose a barter: your tokens for theirs, with optional ETH added on either side to balance value. A pure trade, or a trade plus a top-up, in one order.
Offer against a collection or a trait rather than a specific token: “any token from this collection, optionally with this trait, for mine.” The counterparty chooses which qualifying token fills it.
Every incoming proposal can be accepted, declined, or countered. A counter re-opens the terms; nothing moves until both sides have signed and the trade settles atomically.
Any two of nine chains, settled atomically.
Most trades settle on a single chain. When the two sides of a swap live on different networks, anywhere across the nine supported chains, the trade settles atomically through an escrow bridge rather than as two separate, trust-dependent transfers.
A cross-chain trade proceeds in order: lock the asset on chain A, release the counter-asset on chain B, and on any failure, roll back. There is no intermediate state where one side has parted with value and the other has not. Either the whole trade completes, or nothing moves.
The asset on chain A is locked in escrow.
The counter-asset is released on chain B.
If either leg fails, the escrow unwinds and both sides keep what they started with.
Enforced at settlement, not optional.
Royalties are checked at the protocol level via ERC-2981, against the token’s onchain configuration. A sale that does not honor the artist’s royalty is rejected by the settlement contract itself.
The royalty is set per token by the artist at mint and read at settlement via royaltyInfo(). This is not a marketplace toggle and not an honor system. There is no setting that turns it off, because enforcement lives in the contract, not in the interface.
Permanence you can grade, test, and keep.
The same read-only verification that powers the Permanence Status panel feeds three further surfaces. Each is data-backed, never decorative, and reproducible from public sources.
A graded score per token, up to A+, computed from the verified onchain proof, the content-hash match, redundant permanent copies, and lock state. Shown as a badge and a detail card. Your profile rolls every holding into a portfolio Permanence Report.
An interactive proof on each token page. It simulates the operator-dependent layers, the Perpetual indexer, the CDN mirror, then even the IPFS pin, going offline one by one, while shard 0 stays lit and keeps resolving the artwork from Ethereum itself. It is reduced-motion safe.
A downloadable SVG certificate per token, carrying the title, artist, token id, content hash, the shard list, mint date, and the permanence grade. An archival record a collector can keep independently of the marketplace.
Addresses resolve to names.
Where an address has a primary ENS name, Perpetual shows the name instead of raw hex, across profiles, swaps, provenance, offers, and activity. Wallets without a name fall back to a short, copyable address.
Resolution is presentational only. The underlying address is always the source of truth for ownership and settlement, and the interface never relies on a name to move value. Identity makes the marketplace legible without weakening any onchain guarantee.
Deploy and own your contract outright.
Artists can deploy their own Forever Library contract instance rather than minting into a shared marketplace contract. They own it outright, and they can leave with it intact.
A sovereign contract is yours. Perpetual indexes it the same way it indexes native mints, as a federated index over independently owned contracts. Nothing about your collection is held hostage by the marketplace: if you leave, your contract, your tokens, their provenance, and their permanence all leave with you, unchanged.
This is the difference between renting space on a platform and owning the building. The marketplace becomes one client of your contract, not its landlord.
The index is public infrastructure, not a moat.
The indexer reads only public onchain data and public storage networks. No proprietary input is required to reconstruct it, and the schema is published in full so anyone can run their own.
That openness is what makes the central promise enforceable rather than merely stated. Because the index can be rebuilt from public sources alone, the marketplace is not a single point of failure for discovery any more than it is for storage.
Connect, mint, trade.
Three steps to using Perpetual. The marketplace is non-custodial throughout: it never takes custody of your assets or funds.
- 01
Connect a wallet. Sign in with any standard wallet. Connection is non-custodial; you keep your keys, and signing a listing or swap costs no gas until it fills.
- 02
Mint with shards. Upload your work, set the royalty, and configure permanence. The mandatory
shard 0onchain proof is auto-configured; IPFS, Arweave, and Irys shards are added by default. Optionally lock the shards for guaranteed immutability. - 03
Buy, offer, or swap. Purchase at a fixed price, make an offer, or propose an NFT-for-NFT or criteria swap. Fees and royalties, and any bridge fee on a cross-chain trade, are shown before you confirm.