How a Drop Settles

Every drop launches identically: one mint button, no labels, no special modes. Whether a drop turns contested is not decided in advance by anyone — it is discovered, live, by how many people tap.

• ①︎ The window — every press in the opening minute counts as simultaneous; the contract accepts no mints during it, so a script has nothing to race.
• ②︎ The close — one question: did more people tap than Outputs exist?
• ③︎ Quiet — enough for everyone: every order executes immediately. Most drops end here.
• ④︎ The snapshot — you enter as whoever you already were: what you hold and have spent minting on PD is read from Ethereum at the block before the drop existed.
• ⑤︎ The lock, then the draw — the whole entry list is locked on Ethereum first; the random number that draws it comes from a block that doesn't exist yet.
• ⑥︎ Seats on a fixed beat — a round every four blocks, each winner named on Ethereum; winners are paid-and-delivered from the tap they already made, losing orders die unexecuted.
• ⑦︎ The seal — until about the drop's deadline, never more than fifteen minutes; no trading while the drop settles.
• ⑧︎ Fail-open — the guarantee that doesn't depend on PD being alive.

The entry window

Every drop opens with the same entry window — its first 60 seconds, during which every mint press counts as simultaneous. There is no drop without one: the length is fixed in the Project's own contract, so no artist, key or setting can skip or change it. Your tap signs a complete mint order: your Output, your payment, authorized once in your wallet. The order does not execute yet, and your money stays exactly where it is — PD holds a signed instruction, never funds.

During the window the contract itself accepts no mints at all. That closes the back door: a script going around the app to mint straight on-chain finds nothing to race.

PD answers every entry with an entry receipt: your wallet, your order (its seats, its nonce, its fee cap and the most it can cost) and your start date on PD, signed by PD's settlement key. It carries no time and no place in line, because arrival order counts for nothing. The app keeps it on your account and on your device. If the published list ever left your entry out or changed it, the receipt proves PD signed something else, and the drop's record page checks it for you. No receipt means no entry: the app tells you, and never says you're in without one.

The quiet ending

If the window closes with enough supply for everyone who tapped, every order is seated as the window closes and sent right away, and once they land the drop continues as a normal open mint. Nothing about it ever looks contested — no draw, no wait, no difference from any mint you've ever done. This is most drops.

The CONTESTED flip

If more orders arrived than Outputs exist, the room flips CONTESTED in front of everyone watching, and settlement runs:

1. Standing is read from before the drop. Drops are surprises, so you enter as whoever you already were — there is nothing to game in the moment. The pieces you hold and what you've spent minting on PD come from Ethereum at the block before the drop's Project was created; time on PD comes from PD's own record, anchored on Arweave every day. See Fair Play.
2. The list is locked on Ethereum. Every entry — its order, its standing, and whether it was left out — goes into one fingerprint that the lock writes on chain. An entry is left out only for a reason the chain shows at the close (its wallet moved the order's nonce, or can't cover the order), or because PD voided it; voided entries stay listed, marked voided, with no reason given.
3. Then the random number. It comes from Ethereum's own randomness six blocks after the lock, so it didn't exist while the list could still change. Within a priority band, every entrant has exactly equal odds.
4. Seats go out on a fixed beat. One round every four blocks, about 48 seconds, each decided on Ethereum's state at a block fixed in advance. Every seat names its winner on chain. Winners' orders execute automatically: the Output and the payment move in the same breath, straight from the tap you already made. Winners do nothing.
5. A seat passes on only when the order can no longer land from the winner's wallet: another transaction from that wallet used the order's nonce, the wallet moved the ETH the order needs, or the network's base fee stayed above the order's fee cap for the five blocks after its seat. Its seats go to the next drawn name whose order fits. An order spent before its seat (something only PD and the entrant could do), an order that fails after its seat (whatever made it fail, a storage-fee change mid-drop included), or a seated order that never lands holds its seats until the deadline and passes them to nobody, and the record says so.
6. Losing orders are torn up unexecuted. Your money never moved, so there is nothing to claim back and nothing to wait for. Only seated orders are ever published, and only once the drop is final. A seated order that never landed is published too: until its wallet sends any other transaction, anyone could still send it after the deadline, first-come like any mint, so send one (even a zero transfer to yourself) if you no longer want it.
7. Leftover supply. A drop that sells out through the draw finishes the moment it does. Anything else left opens to everyone at the deadline, sixteen minutes after the drop opened, first-come like any open mint. That time is fixed when the Project is deployed, so nobody, PD included, can time the opening.

The drawn order is the whole settlement — there is never a second draw:

• ①︎ The head wins — the first drawn names take the seats, whole orders only: an order too big for the seats left is passed over for the next one that fits.
• ②︎ The line is already drawn — everyone past supply sits in the same drawn order; there is no second draw and no discretion, ever.
• ③︎ A seat passes on only when its order can no longer land from its winner's wallet — to the next drawn name whose order fits, automatically.

Sealed until the reveal

Outputs minted in a contested settlement arrive sealed: held in your wallet but untradeable until about the drop's deadline — never more than fifteen minutes. The seal is set by the lock and can never be extended by anyone once set.

During it, Outputs can't change hands — no flips while the drop is still settling. Then every Output unseals together.

Check it yourself

Every drop that reaches its lock publishes its full record at /drops/<Project address>: the locked list, the standing behind every entry, the lock, the random number, the drawn line and every round's decision, and, once the drop is final, the seated orders. Tap VERIFY THIS DRAW and your own browser checks it against Ethereum, row by row: the list was locked before the random number existed, standing and every exclusion match the chain (time on PD, its log on Arweave), the line is the draw's, and every seat and revoke is the one the rules give, on its fixed block. If you entered from that device or account, it checks your own entry against your receipt too. PD's server only hands over the record; it has no say in the answer.

Each final record is also copied to Arweave, paid from the storage fee minters already pay. The fingerprint the lock wrote on Ethereum proves any copy, so the record outlives PD.

What PD can still do, and how it shows

The settlement key's powers are narrow, and what is left of them shows on the record:

• Stop settling. The rest opens first-come at the deadline, and the record reads "stopped after round k". PD can't choose who gets those seats.
• Spend or hold back one entrant's order. Their seats are held until the deadline and pass to nobody. The record names them: "held order spent before its seat" or "seated, includable, never landed".
• Before the draw: void entries (counted on the record), refuse an entry at the door (no receipt is issued, and the entrant sees the error), leave a mint out of someone's spend (only that entrant can spot it), and supply time on PD (its own record, anchored on Arweave every day; a day's log that arrives late shows on the record).
• Open a quiet drop's leftovers. When a drop has fewer entrants than Outputs, PD's key finishes settlement once every seat has landed or had its chance, and that block is when the rest opens. A quiet drop has more Outputs than entrants, so there is nothing scarce to race for.
• Like anyone with enough ETH: pay to keep Ethereum's fees above orders' fee caps for minutes on end. That costs many ETH, happens in plain sight on chain, and only ever passes a seat to the next name in the drawn line.

None of it can pick who wins: everything before the lock is blind to the random number, and nothing after it can move a seat to anyone without failing the public check.

The fail-open guarantee

The entry window is choreographed by PD's settlement service — but the guarantee does not depend on it. Every drop carries a hard deadline, written immutably into its contract at deploy — the entry minute plus a fifteen-minute settlement room, so sixteen minutes out: if settlement has not concluded by then, for any reason including PD itself vanishing, minting opens automatically as a normal first-come mint. If the lock never lands, the drop simply opens at the deadline; if settlement stops partway, the rest opens at the deadline and the record says where it stopped.

The settlement service's authority is deliberately tiny. It can choreograph a drop's opening minutes and do what the list above names — nothing else. It cannot touch money (winners pay the same price through the same instant artist split as any minter), cannot change supply or price, cannot reach existing Outputs or extend a seal, and none of its calls work past the deadline. Anything it does with a seat shows on the public check.