Onchain Time

Time is a magnifier of onchain provenance.

Just as time adds layers to the story and value of a physical artifact, it similarly amplifies the provenance of superchain NFTs, ensuring their history not only persists but enriches. An unwavering scribe for understanding and preserving history.

Origin. Journey. Identity.

Origin 📍

Envision a vast, sprawling digital gallery, each piece boasting a distinct indisputable lineage. This is the magic of onchain provenance, a chain of history that champions authenticity and certainty. This isn't mere technology; it's a revolution in storytelling ensured by cryptographic signatures that transform the digital space into a canvas of trust.

The true value of an artifact lies in its unmistakable connection to its creator.

Time solidifies origins.

jack butcher creating his canvases
jack butcher creating his canvases

Journey 📖

The digital world's relics face no erosion, no fading; their stories, instead, grow ever more intricate, weaving a tapestry of permanent interactions that span social generations, continents, and cultures. Provenance is not just knowing the origin, it's about understanding the journey.

Just as these digital artifacts defy time, their provenance extends this permanence to real-world assets, making their histories transparent and their stories part of our collective digital heritage. As more real-world assets get tokenized and pinned on-chain, the value of such provenance becomes more apparent to the users. Imagine a house, a piece of land, or even a vintage car's history transparently accessible. This isn't just about ownership, it's about the story of the asset, and each story adds to its unique value.

Publicly accessible ledgers stand out as repositories of untold stories, where diligent sleuthing can uncover value that might have remained obscured in the shadows of traditional gated database systems. This transparent collection of data invites a collective exploration into the depths of digital history, revealing analytics, connections and interoperable narratives that traditional 'deeds' and their transfers could never surface.

This journey, however, isn't devoid of turbulence. The phenomena of blur farming and the intricacies of bridging across Layer 2 networks hint at a future where provenance isn't just about authenticity but about the very decisions and strategies that shape an asset's journey. These narratives, with each token farmed or bridge crossed, become indelible chapters in the annals of digital history.

Over time, as these stories accumulate, the value of provenance increases. It's not just a static snapshot, it's a dynamic, evolving narrative.

Time refines journeys.

a terraform journey
a terraform journey

Identity 🧬

Identities have always been fluid and multifaceted, with onchain identities, we have a new kind of authenticity. These identities are not just a profile page with a name and a photo, but a rich ledger of pseudonymous interactions, creations, & transactions offering a new level of authenticity that mirrors our multifaceted selves and burdens us with a new social graph.

Every interaction adds to the story of our onchain identities. They become time capsules, preserving our digital selves for future generations. This kind of authenticity is rare in the online world, especially in an AI one. The future will only add more depth to the tokens, the provenance, and the identities we forge onchain.

Time amplifies identity.

Voices wanting to abstract away.

I've encountered voices that champion the erasure of this very transparency, advocating for a veil over the blockchain in the name of “better UX”.

chris dixon
chris dixon

I am very vocal about my distaste towards the idea of "abstract away the blockchain". An idea, mostly propagated by those freshly arrived from the echelons of Web 2.0, threatens to undermine the very ethos of crypto. A beacon of authenticity, trust, and identity.

Crypto is a new paradigm, it needs to be seen and understood, not buried behind abstractions. It is a “strong” technology with core features that are unique, attempting to hide them away does a disservice to all the promise it holds.


The Glyph is a video series, farcaster channel, and collection of essays dedicated to uncovering the dynamic world of Ethereum and the superchain through a narrative approach focused on onchain analytics and data.

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