credits is an artwork about belief each credit was created from a private payment - an $8 transaction on x money each transaction id, originally visible only to sender and recipient, was converted to a sha-256 hash to create an artwork made of four 8x8 printing plates in cmyk (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) the transaction id and settlement timestamp became public source data for the onchain artwork the x money transaction settlement time (in seconds) determined which plates print - there are 15 different possible combinations of cmyk, so this process repeats 4 x per minute if the original transaction id contained an 8, the resulting artwork metadata keeps track of each the rarity calculation considers the color combination, the number of active pixels, the space they occupy after the plates shift, the number of 8s in the transaction id, and the registration of the plates these qualities are measured against the completed collection and translated into a credit rating between 80 and 800 the rating measures those traits - it cannot account for every reason someone might value an image the rating is fixed - the price is whatever someone is willing to pay 80 credits can be burned to create a statement the collector chooses which credits to use and how to arrange them - their individual ratings are added together, and their colors become the material of the new artwork a statement can take different visual forms without changing its rating statements can also be overprinted - one is burned into another, combining their ink, ratings and histories balance is the proposed next form under this design, a statement can be permanently surrendered for its rating in divisible erc-20 tokens - one point becomes one balance the statement is locked rather than destroyed - its artwork and history remain, but it can no longer be transferred its quantity and color composition can move independently each receiving wallet gets one non-transferable erc-721 artwork the artwork stays with the wallet and reads its current balance of the transferable erc-20 token the tokens move - the artwork updates if the wallet holds nothing, the artwork remains and displays zero when balances meet, their colors mix in proportion to the amounts received - when they split, each part carries a share of that mixture the colors preserve an aggregate ancestry, not a traceable list of individual credits or statements exchange custody can mix them further - a buyer may receive the exchange’s mixture rather than the particular colors a seller deposited someone who never owned a credit or a statement can inherit their colors credits, statements and balances can exist at the same time some people keep the individual marks, some compose them into pages, and some surrender the page for something they can divide and exchange others may simply prefer the balance artwork composition reduces the number of surviving credits, overprinting reduces the number of surviving statements, and surrender moves statements out of circulation while releasing their accumulated rating as balance the appetite for liquidity becomes one of the forces shaping all three collections but making something divisible does not mean someone will want to buy it - actual liquidity still requires buyers and funded markets balance offers divisibility, not a promise of demand the market becomes a medium - its activity changes the distribution of the work, and when trading stops, that distribution remains the price can disappear, the artwork cannot