The art cannot die.
Every artwork on Perpetual is provably permanent, and that permanence does not depend on Perpetual. A mandatory onchain proof anchors each token to Ethereum. Anyone can reproduce the verification, and the entire index can be rebuilt from public data alone. This page explains, precisely, how.
We claim exactly one thing, and we claim it precisely: the artwork survives. The orderbook and index are run conventionally, centralized for speed, and their failure can never touch your art or your ownership. We do not claim a decentralization we have not built.
Most NFT art is one missed invoice from gone.
The token lives on Ethereum forever. The file it points to usually does not. When a pin lapses or a server goes dark, the chain still records your ownership of something that no longer resolves to anything.
An IPFS pin stops being paid for.
The CID is valid; no node serves it. The image is gone.
The hosting domain in the tokenURI expires.
The metadata 404s. The token points to nothing.
The marketplace that pinned the media shuts down.
Everything they hosted disappears with them.
Most NFTs are a pointer to a file held somewhere fragile. The token is permanent; the art it references is not. When the pin lapses or the server dies, the chain still says you own it, but there is nothing left to see.
Perpetual inverts the dependency. The artwork itself is written into Ethereum as a mandatory onchain proof shard. The other backends add resolution and redundancy. None of them is what keeps the art alive, so none of them can take it down.
tokenURI → fragile host · Perpetual → onchain content
Four immutable copies. One mandatory backstop.
Each token carries parallel, immutable versions of its artwork across independent storage backends. Three add resolution and redundancy. Shard 0, the onchain proof, is the permanence guarantor, and it is the only one permanence actually requires.
datachain
permaweb
content-addressed
Permanent backstop
Survives as long as Ethereum
Four parallel immutable copies, layered in depth. One mandatory backstop.
Onchain proofethfs
Permanence guarantor
IPFScontent-addressed
Arweavepermaweb
Irysdatachain
Four parallel immutable copies · one mandatory backstop
A full copy of the artwork written into Ethereum itself.
shard0Configured(tokenId) · mandatory · survives as long as Ethereum
High-resolution media, addressed by the hash of its own content.
CID = hash(content) · auto-pinned · performance, not permanence
Pay-once permanent storage on an independent network.
confirmed permanent · endowment-funded · independent of Perpetual
A second permanent network, for redundant independence.
confirmed · separate operator · separate failure domain
Because the onchain proof shard carries the guarantee on its own, our ongoing IPFS and CDN costs are performance optimizations, not permanence obligations. If Perpetual stops paying for pinning, permanence is unaffected. This is the point most architectures miss: permanence is decoupled from operator solvency. The art does not depend on us staying in business.
Do not trust us. Reproduce it.
A read-only service continuously resolves every shard, hashes the content it gets back, and compares that hash against the record written onchain at mint. It reads only public data, so anyone can run the exact same checks and arrive at the exact same result. Verifiability, not our word.
Resolve
Fetch the bytes from every shard.
GET onchain · ipfs · arweave · irys
Hash
Hash the content that came back.
keccak256(content) → 0x…
Compare
Check it against the onchain record.
getMintData(tokenId).metadataHash
Status
Report a verifiable result.
match → permanence integrity 100%
read-only · independently reproducible · no proprietary inputs
“Perpetual can disappear entirely and every NFT remains fully intact: owned by the correct wallet, resolving to its artwork via the onchain proof shard, with complete provenance. A third party can re-index the contracts and stand up a replacement marketplace with zero cooperation from us.”
This is not a feature of Perpetual. It is the property Perpetual exists to preserve. Every decision on this page is tested against the sentence above. If a choice could break it, the choice does not ship.
stays onchain, always correct
resolves via Shard 0, forever
complete, public, rebuildable
The index is public infrastructure, not a moat.
The indexer reads only public onchain and storage data, and its schema is published in full. Anyone can run their own against the same sources. That openness is precisely what makes the invariant enforceable rather than merely promised.
# perpetual-indexer / schema.v1
# Reads ONLY public onchain + public storage data.
# No proprietary inputs. Anyone may run this to reconstruct the index.
source contracts {
forever_library native # marketplace-deployed instances
forever_library sovereign # artist-owned instances (federated)
settlement seaport # order fills, cancellations
}
record mint {
contract address
token_id uint256
creator address
block_number uint64
timestamp uint64 # block time
title string
media_type enum
royalty_bps uint16
metadata_hash bytes32 # from getMintData(tokenId)
}
record shard_status {
token_id uint256
index uint8 # 0 = onchain proof (mandatory)
backend enum # onchain | ipfs | arweave | irys | cdn
resolves bool
hash_matches bool # hash(content) == mint.metadata_hash
locked bool # isLocked(tokenId)
last_checked timestamp
}
record settlement {
order_hash bytes32
token_id uint256
from address
to address
price_wei uint256
royalty_paid uint256 # enforced at settlement (ERC-2981)
block_number uint64
}
derive {
ownership <- transfers ∪ settlements # current holder
provenance <- mint ∪ transfers ∪ sales # full history
permanence_status <- shard_status # per-token integrity
}Because every input is public, a third party can stand up an identical index with zero cooperation from Perpetual. An open schema is what turns the invariant from a promise into something you can verify for yourself.
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. There is no marketplace toggle that turns this off.
Not a UI suggestion, not an honor system. The contract enforces it on every fill.
dishonored royalty → settlement rejected
100%
Permanence integrity
100%
Onchain-proof coverage
268
Verified shards
64
Works archived
The art survives, even if Perpetual does not.
Browse work engineered to outlast its marketplace, or mint your own onto a record that cannot be revoked.