The Awakening

Gnomes are free. Nobody buys one from PD; nobody mints one on purpose. A gnome is won by minting the project's art — and nobody knows exactly when.

How: Mint the project's art — a gnome is won at a hidden hour, never bought.

The shut hill

Before its hour, a project's GNOME tab shows only a closed hillside: a dark mine mouth, two lamplit eyes blinking in the dark, and a line — something lives down here. Nothing about the keeper leaks: not its name, not its temperament, not its look. The hill is shut.

The hidden hour

Every project has a waking threshold: a mint count at which its gnome wakes. The number is seeded per project, computed only on PD's servers, and published nowhere — it genuinely cannot be known from outside. Somewhere between early in the mint and deep into it, one mint crosses the line.

The wallet whose mint strikes the hour owns the gnome. That's the whole rule. The crossing Output's minter is recorded as the keeper's keeper the moment the threshold is crossed, permanently, along with the Output number that struck the hour and a rarity cast from the project's real traded volume at that instant. Every mint you make in an unawakened project is a lottery ticket you were buying anyway.

The awakening is written once and never rewritten. Selling the crossing Output later changes nothing — the gnome is not attached to the Output; it was won at the hour and lives in your gnomewallet until you trade it on the mushroom market.

The keeping, on record

Once awake, the gnome's tab shows the full record under its journal: who keeps it (their PD handle), the awakening date, the Output that struck the hour, and the rarity. Everyone can see it; it is part of the project's story. The keeper's gnome-world identity — the .gnome name, the 6n0m3… address, the wallet itself — never appears in the tab; that whole world lives behind the gnomewallet pill in settings.

Respect — the keeper's ladder

Own it or not, every signed-in visitor has a standing with the keeper, climbed with real ledger facts only — Outputs of the project held, unbroken held-days, and favored Outputs (held at least 7 days, never listed):

Rung	Name	Earned by
0	A STRANGER	no Outputs held
1	KNOWN AT THE DOOR	hold ≥1 Output
2	FRIEND OF THE HILL	≥21 total held-days
3	FAVORED	≥1 favored Output
4	KIN OF THE VEIN	≥3 favored Outputs and ≥60 held-days

The ladder is drawn in the tab as the gnome's own gems, with an honest line naming exactly what earns the next rung. It changes what you hear: the keeper greets strangers, holders, and its favored people from different pools entirely — and at FAVORED, it writes the Appraisal: a real, fact-only written case for your longest-held Output, in its own voice. Listing an Output breaks its favour; the keeper notices such things.