Provenance, layered
like patina.
Patina divides one physical artwork into thousands of individually minted certificates: a single grid, a single ledger, a permanent record of who owns which piece of the work.
A permanent layer, the way metal earns one.
Patina is the surface that forms on aged metal and artwork over time, proof of history that can't be faked or removed. The Patina Protocol is built to be that layer on-chain: permanent, verifiable, and attached to the work forever.
It takes one physical artwork, maps it onto a precise grid, and mints every cell in that grid as its own NFT on the XRP Ledger. Each certificate carries permanent metadata and a unique image, and each one can be owned, held, and resold independently: a single valuable work, made collectively ownable without being physically divided.
How a cell becomes an NFT
Every sale runs the same sequence, in the same order, whether it's cell one or cell one hundred thousand. The order matters: nothing expensive or irreversible happens until the cell is safely reserved.
A database-level unique constraint locks the cell number before anything touches the blockchain. If two buyers reach for the same cell at once, only one insert succeeds; the other fails instantly, with no wasted transaction.
A record is assembled for this exact cell: artist, artwork, edition, grid position, total supply, and purchase date.
That metadata is uploaded permanently to Arweave through Irys, before the token that will reference it even exists.
An NFTokenMint transaction is submitted to the XRP Ledger, tagged with the protocol's shared taxon and a 3% transfer fee that routes resale royalties automatically.
An NFTokenCreateOffer lets the buyer accept delivery straight into their own wallet; the protocol never custodies the token.
A unique typographic certificate is rendered server-side for this cell alone: its position, its edition, its owner.
The certificate image is written to Arweave permanently, and becomes the NFT's on-chain image reference.
The database entry is updated with every ID the pipeline produced (NFT ID, offer ID, metadata URL, certificate URL) for audit and recovery.
The buyer's wallet is credited in the holder ledger, and the cell count they own is updated.
A grid that fits the work exactly.
Given an artwork's physical dimensions and a target token count, the calculator finds every factor pair of that count and scores each one against the artwork's aspect ratio, then returns the pair that fits closest, with no leftover fraction of a cell.
A 36-inch by 24-inch print, tokenized into 100,000 cells, factors out to an exact 400 × 250 grid: a 3:2 aspect ratio matched perfectly, with every cell the same physical size.
What's actually written on-chain.
Nothing about ownership or royalties depends on a server staying online. Once a cell is minted, its terms live on the ledger itself.
Royalties don't rely on a marketplace agreeing to honor them. The 3% transfer fee is read by the ledger on every secondary sale and routed to the issuer automatically: no application-layer enforcement, no way to route around it.
June 29, 2026 · ledger 105257656
tesSUCCESS
Gold covers what hasn't sold yet.
In the live gallery, the real artwork sits on a canvas underneath a solid gold mask. Every time a cell sells, the mask is punched through at that exact grid position, revealing the artwork beneath it, permanently, at that one cell. A fine mesh grid stays drawn on top so the boundaries stay legible as the piece fills in. The panel at the top of this page borrows the same idea: gold cells fading to reveal what's underneath, cell by cell.
Built to outlast any one marketplace.
The protocol and the product it currently powers are deliberately kept apart. One is infrastructure; the other is a storefront built on top of it.
Grid calculation, Arweave uploads, XRPL minting, certificate generation, and the audit trail. Any physical work, any institution, same pipeline.
The marketplace built on top: the gallery, the purchase flow, wallet sign-in, and the charitable split on primary sales. The majority of every primary sale goes to the designated charity or museum; Illiqua retains a platform fee, and secondary royalties are enforced by the ledger itself, not by Illiqua.
Illiqua is the first product built on the Patina Protocol; the intent is for it not to be the last. Any marketplace, charity, or institution should eventually be able to tokenize a physical work through the same pipeline.
Jan is a fullstack and blockchain developer with a background in Computer Science and Fine Art, and an alum of the Aquarium Residency at XRPL Commons in Paris. He built Patina out of a conviction that NFTs earn their place by being useful, not speculated on, and he's committed to pushing their growth, development, and real-world utility forward, one protocol at a time.