Built by CypherPunks, ETCH’D brings publishing, collecting and discovery together around a simple principle: the artwork itself belongs onchain.
The first artwork pressed on ETCH’D is a 525-byte SVG.
It is the CypherPunks logo: a small, familiar mark, written into Ethereum. Inside the file is a message that never appears in the image:
“For 100,000 years, we have made marks. The impulse is ancient. This surface is new. May you carry it further than we could imagine.”
The work is called The First Mark. It begins ECHOES, a series in which invited artists will reinterpret the CypherPunks logo through their own practices. It also introduces the idea behind ETCH’D: give artists a place to publish work whose life can extend beyond the platform that first presents it.
An artwork may change hands many times. It may find its audience years after it was made. Along the way, websites change, businesses close and the tools used to view it evolve. Preserving the work means thinking about that longer life from the beginning.
We built ETCH’D with that future in mind.
ETCH’D is an onchain art press and marketplace on Ethereum and Shape. Artists publish their files directly into the chain, set their sale terms and bring the work to collectors. The platform provides a place to discover it, understand it and follow what happens next.
The name comes from etching: making a mark in a surface that can carry it forward.
The file is the work
Digital art has developed through many approaches to storage and preservation. Artists, collectors and platforms have built substantial archives using distributed storage, dedicated servers and onchain systems. Each approach reflects choices about cost, scale and how a work should survive.
ETCH’D makes one of those choices explicit. The exact bytes of the file an artist submits are written into the selected blockchain. Once sealed, that inscription holds the completed file, and the token’s onchain metadata carries the artist’s title and description.
That gives preservation a concrete meaning. The file can be retrieved from the network independently of ETCH’D’s website. Our interface may evolve, but the inscription remains available for other tools to read, for as long as the underlying network remains accessible.
For an artist, the practical change is access to that process.
The press handles the work of writing the file onchain. Artists choose their file, review the cost, set the terms and approve the publishing steps from their wallet. Supported formats include still images, animation, video and self-contained HTML, within the press’s size limit. The file’s size and chosen network determine the cost of publishing it.
Artists can offer a unique work through an auction lasting one to seven days, with an optional reserve and a clock that starts at the first qualifying bid or a scheduled opening time. Late bids extend the closing window. Fixed-price releases support editions of up to 100; an edition of one provides a fixed-price sale for a unique work.
These tools give artists room to decide how a work should enter the world.
A collecting history that carries forward
Publishing is one part of the problem. Finding an audience is another.
An artist arriving on a new platform often encounters collectors as little more than wallet addresses. Yet those addresses may represent years of attention: works bought and held, artists supported early, and a collecting practice sustained through quieter periods.
ETCH’D’s Collector Reputation board brings some of that history into view.
It draws on recorded collecting across Ethereum, including activity on other platforms. Its three components consider eligible holdings and their duration, consistency of purchasing, and qualifying support for artists through primary sales. Linked wallets can contribute to one collector’s record.
The useful question is what that history can help an artist understand. Who has stayed with the work? Who has supported different artists? Who has continued collecting over time?
The board gives artists evidence to explore. Its coverage is incomplete, and a score can only describe the activity it can see. Each collector’s breakdown matters alongside the number.
Artists can use the board when choosing an audience for a sale, combine it with their own list, or keep access open. Collectors bring an existing history with them, and artists gain another way to find people who may care about their work.
Anyone who would like to be added to the leaderboard can DM us on X.
A place for attention
ETCH’D grows out of CypherPunks, a fully onchain collection built around a daily auction unfolding over decades. That long horizon informs the platform.
The community already brings its own tastes, conversations and collecting habits. ETCH’D gives those relationships somewhere to develop around a wider range of artists.
Collectors can follow people, explore their activity and discover work through the artists and collectors they pay attention to. Only CypherPunks holders can like and comment on ETCH’D, so every like and every comment comes from the community. A CypherPunks algorithm is coming, drawing on those likes and on holding history to surface work in the feed.
HASH’D contributes the editorial layer: interviews and articles that give readers time with an artist’s ideas, methods and intentions. Artists featured in HASH’D can carry a gold badge on ETCH’D linking that editorial history to their presence on the platform.
Each part of the family has a role. CypherPunks brings the founding community. HASH’D develops the context around the work. ETCH’D provides the tools to publish and collect it.
Together, they create more opportunities for an encounter with an artwork to become a lasting interest.
One mark, many artists
ECHOES is the first expression of that ambition.
The series begins with the CypherPunks logo and an invitation to reinterpret it. Each participating artist will make a unique work, pressed fully onchain. The shared mark gives the series continuity; each artist gives it a different meaning.
Over time, ECHOES can become a record of the people who passed through this community and what they brought to it. A familiar shape might become an animation, an intricate drawing, a piece of code or something we have yet to imagine.
The First Mark leaves that possibility open. Its hidden message is addressed to the artists who follow.
A file can carry more than its visible image. It can carry an invitation, a dedication, a trace of the circumstances in which it was made. Those details can remain there for someone else to discover.
Opening the press
ETCH’D is launching with an invited group of artists in closed beta. They are publishing the first works while we observe the process from the initial upload through to collecting and settlement. The intention is to open the press to every artist after this first stage.
Browsing, bidding and collecting are already open to everyone. The site can be explored on a phone; publishing and wallet transactions currently require a desktop browser.
Visit etchd.art to explore the first works and the Collector Reputation board. Artists interested in publishing during the beta can reach out to the team by DM’ing the X account.
We want ETCH’D to become a place artists return to throughout their practice, and collectors return to as their interests deepen. That will take good tools, careful attention and years of work.
The first mark is there. What follows will be made by the people who use the press.