How the Decaputin Collection Works
Decaputin is a live-born experimental collection of 10,000 Heads.
It is not a collection prepared in advance, sealed inside an archive, and then released all at once. Heads are spawned as people use the website. In Decaputin, scrolling is not just navigation: it is the gesture that drops the blade. Each decapitation can generate a new Head, with its own combination of traits, but nobody knows the final composition beforehand. A Head enters the Collection only if someone decides to claim it.
This is the central point: the Collection is not simply published by its creators. It is progressively selected by its users.
A Head is spawned by that gesture. It becomes part of the Collection only when it is claimed. From that moment on, it occupies the first available slot, is associated with a Nostr npub, and carries a public proof of ownership.
Generated does not mean claimed
Decaputin distinguishes between two fundamental numbers:
| Limit | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 256,000 generated Heads | The maximum number of Heads the system can generate |
| 10,000 claimed Heads | The maximum number of Heads that can enter the Collection |
A spawned Head is a possibility. A claimed Head is a choice that has entered the Collection.
The difference is not just formal. A Head may have been generated, have an image, a set of traits, a price, and a page, while still remaining outside the Collection until someone claims it. Only the claim turns it into a collected, numbered Head linked to an owner.
A claim happens through two elements: a Lightning payment in sats and a public Nostr identity. The first person to complete the claim becomes the recognized owner of the Head and, at the same time, determines its permanent entry into the Collection.
Basket: the first claim opportunity
When a user scrolls through a decapitation and a new Head is generated, that Head appears in their Basket.
The Basket is the first access window to the Head. The person who has just generated it can claim it before it enters the normal Marketplace flow and becomes available to other users too.
This phase has a particular meaning. Claiming a freshly generated Head is not just buying an image: it means bringing into the Collection something that was born from your own action on the site. It is the most direct form of participation in the project.
A Head in the Basket can be claimed at an initial price that may be more favorable than later conditions. In this first window, when a complete materialized Value does not exist yet, the claim price starts from the Head’s technical base price: an economic base assigned by the system, different depending on whether the Head is a First Edition or a Clone. The generation Milestone, if present, and the current progress of the Collection can then be applied to that base.
If that opportunity is lost, the Head may become available in the Marketplace. At that point, the system can assign it a more complete Value based on the current conditions of the Collection: rarity, clones, burns, progression, and other factors may have changed the picture.
Marketplace and secondary market
Decaputin also includes a secondary market.
A Head that has already been claimed can be listed for sale by its owner. In that case, it is no longer an available system Head: it is a Head owned by a user and offered for sale at a price chosen by the seller.
When another user buys it, the transfer happens through a Lightning payment and the signature of a Nostr sale event. The Head passes to the new owner, while Decaputin processes the payout to the seller and retains a platform fee.
The same principle behind the original claim therefore continues in later sales: the transfer produces a new Nostr proof signed by the buyer, accompanied by a Decaputin attestation and linked to the previous ownership history.
This distinction matters:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Available | The Head does not yet have an owner and can be claimed from the system |
| Claimed | The Head is already in the Collection and associated with an npub |
| For sale | The Head is owned by a user but listed in the Marketplace |
| Sold | The Head has been purchased by a new owner |
The Marketplace does not change the nature of the Collection: the Head remains the same, with its history, hashes, number, and provenance. What changes is the owner.
Reducing circulating Heads
Decaputin does not necessarily leave every generated and unclaimed Head circulating forever.
The system includes automatic mechanics that reduce the number of Heads still outside the Collection. When the number of circulating Heads crosses certain operational conditions, a Burning Wave of variable intensity may be created.
A Burning Wave involves Heads that are still available or otherwise unclaimed. Heads that have already entered the Collection are not exposed to the normal burning mechanics.
The Heads involved in a wave do not necessarily disappear immediately. For a period of time, they may still be claimed. If a Head is claimed before the burn becomes effective, it enters the Collection and gains Survivor status.
If it is not claimed in time, it is burned and ceases to be a live, claimable Head.
This has two consequences. The first is narrative: some Heads carry the provenance of having survived a Burning Wave. The intensity of the wave a Head survived may also matter in the calculation of its Value.
The second consequence is structural: when a Head is burned, the relationships among the other live Heads can change too. Rarity is not frozen while the Collection is still forming. A burn does not rewrite the past: it leaves a trace, but removes that Head from the present claimable set.
At the final closure, when the Collection reaches the cap of 10,000 Heads, one final burn eliminates all remaining unclaimed Heads.
Traits and scarcity
Each Head is composed of a combination of traits: facial attributes, skins, accessories, and other visual elements that determine its final appearance.
Generation does not draw from a uniform deck. Some traits are more likely, others are harder to encounter. Some categories are structural, while others may appear or not appear. Each Head can also contain a minimum and maximum number of traits.
There is a second form of scarcity too: some traits have finite availability.
When a trait with limited availability is used, that use is counted. Once its limit is reached, that trait is no longer available for future generations. Heads already created with that trait naturally keep it.
This makes scarcity more interesting than a label attached in advance. Rarity depends on initial probabilities, but also on what is actually generated, what users decide to claim, and what gets burned.
A trait pool that changes over time
The pool of available traits can also shrink and reopen over time.
Some non-exhausted traits may temporarily leave the generation pool and later return. Traits that have reached their limit, on the other hand, remain exhausted.
This means two users generating Heads at different moments are not necessarily drawing from the exact same set of possibilities.
The consequence is simple: Decaputin is not a static statistical machine. The “genetic world” from which Heads are born can change while the Collection takes shape.
This mechanic can also encourage the appearance of Clones, because a smaller pool increases the probability that certain combinations return.
First Edition and Clones
A Head is not necessarily unique.
Decaputin distinguishes between First Edition and Clone through the specific combination of traits in a Head. The first time a combination appears, that Head is a First Edition. If the same combination appears again, later occurrences are Clones.
A Clone is not an error and it is not an unauthorized copy. It is a new appearance of the same configuration.
The First Edition, however, keeps a special position: it is the first occurrence of that combination in the history of the system.
The number of live Clones contributes to the Popularity of the corresponding First Edition. The more live copies of the same configuration exist, the more popular that configuration becomes. But Popularity can also decrease if available Clones are burned.
The public Popularity tiers follow this logic:
| Tier | Live Clones |
|---|---|
| Niche | no live clone |
| Emerging | 1 live clone |
| Growing | 2–3 live clones |
| Popular | 4–7 live clones |
| Hot | 8–15 live clones |
| Legendary | 16+ live clones |
Live Clones count, whether claimed or available. Burned Clones do not count.
Milestones
Each Head has a progressive generation number.
This number should not be confused with the Head’s entry number in the Collection. A Head can be, for example, the forty-sixth Head ever generated and at the same time the first Head to enter the Collection.
Some generation numbers have special meaning because they match Milestones: numbers that human imagination already recognizes before encountering them inside Decaputin.
They can be historical dates, scientific constants, technological thresholds, measurements of the planet, pop references, religious, sports, or cultural numbers. The point is not to create a closed mythology for the project, but to connect some Heads to coordinates that already exist in collective memory: 42, 1492, 1969, 56k, 10000, 256000.
A Milestone can contribute to the Head’s Value. Not because it automatically makes the Head better, but because it adds a recognizable meaning to its position in the generation sequence, even outside Decaputin.
Value does not mean Price
Decaputin distinguishes between Value and Price.
Value is a system-calculated amount expressed in sats. It is used to interpret the Head within the project’s mechanics.
Price is the actual price at which a Head can be claimed or purchased at a specific moment.
For a Head listed for sale, the Price is chosen by the seller, within the floor or minimum listing price required by the interface. It may therefore differ from the Value calculated by Decaputin.
Value starts from a different base depending on whether the Head is a First Edition or a Clone, and can be influenced by several factors:
| Factor | Effect |
|---|---|
| Base / Edition | First Editions and Clones start from different bases |
| Rarity | Depends on the Head’s overall rarity score, calculated relative to the other live Heads |
| Popularity | Depends on the live Clones of the same First Edition |
| Milestones | Some generation numbers have special meaning |
| Survivor | A Head claimed during a Burning Wave keeps that provenance |
| Collection progress | Progress toward the 10,000 Heads progressively increases the Value of live Heads |
Rarity should not be understood as the simple sum of rare labels attached to individual traits. Traits contribute to the composition and scarcity of a Head, but the public tier — Common, Rare, or Super Rare — concerns the Head as a whole: it compares the Head’s current rarity score with that of the other live Heads.
That score is not final while the Collection is open. It can change when new Heads are generated or when available Heads are burned. It becomes stable only when the Collection closes.
The public Rarity tiers are relative to live Heads:
| Tier | Public rule |
|---|---|
| Common | below 50% of the highest rarity score among live Heads |
| Rare | at least 50%, but below 80% |
| Super Rare | at least 80% of the highest rarity score among live Heads |
The point is that Value is not just a rarity score. It is a composite reading of the Head: edition, traits, clones, burns, milestones, and the overall progress of the Collection.
Not an NFT. But verifiable provenance.
Decaputin does not issue an NFT token.
There is no ERC-721 representing the Head. There is no mint on a traditional blockchain. The Head does not live as an on-chain token.
But a claim is not just a private line in a database either.
When a Head is claimed, ownership can be attested through signed Nostr events. The user’s signature links the Head to their public Nostr identity. The attestation signed by Decaputin links the essential Head data: Collection number, generation ID, traits, hashes, Lightning payment, and image references.
The most precise definition is this:
a digital collectible with ownership and provenance attested by signed Nostr events.
The signature makes the event verifiable: if the data is changed, the signature no longer matches. Nostr relays make the proof publicly retrievable, although the absolute persistence of every relay should not be confused with an eternal storage guarantee.
In simple terms:
Nostr = ownership and provenance
Blossom / IPFS = asset persistence and distribution
hash = verification of the image identityDecaputin therefore tries to obtain some of the qualities associated with NFTs — verifiable owner, provenance, identity of the work, transfer history — without issuing a token on a blockchain.
This provenance does not stop at the first claim. When a Head is resold, the new transfer can produce a subsequent Nostr proof linked to the Head’s previous history.
The first live claim: Collection #1
The first Head to enter the Collection shows the model clearly.
Collection #1 was not a Head chosen in advance by the creators as the official opening piece. It was a Head produced by the live process, then selected and claimed.
Its main data:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Collection number | #1 |
| generationId | 46 |
| slug | seer-polar-drip |
| Head ID | c871607ffd7aae9bdec87b187d3f5dea |
| First Edition | yes |
| Clone | no |
| claim price | 1500 sats |
| Nostr claim event | kind 7620 |
| event ID | 9f956bc64d6542651f46a76781970f533c1903c79dab690f84b6680f1bd1412f |
The claim also contains a separate Decaputin attestation, kind 7622, signed by the project.
The event was verified by exact ID and can be retrieved with a valid signature from Decaputin’s canonical relay and from independent public relays:
wss://relay.decaputin.comwss://nos.lolwss://relay.damus.io
The image is referenced on multiple layers:
| Layer | Reference |
|---|---|
| Decaputin CDN | https://cdn.decaputin.com/heads/c871607ffd7aae9bdec87b187d3f5dea.png |
| Blossom | https://blossom.decaputin.com/ce5e4f1ec65d7fea037a8d8ea89c326c99d6ddab50de4b7b029bf2b6a53ee3e6.png |
| IPFS | bafkreigolzhr5rs5p7vag6unr2ujymtmthln3k2q3zfxwau36k3kkpxd4y |
The claim also includes hashes such as assetHash, pngHash, and pixelHash. This makes it possible to connect the proof not only to a URL, but to the cryptographic identity of the image.
Collection #1 makes one essential distinction visible: generationId 46 and Collection #1 are not a contradiction. The Head was the forty-sixth generated, but the first chosen by users to enter the Collection.
The Genesis Manifest
Decaputin published a Genesis Manifest as a Nostr event of kind 78.
The Manifest fixes the main structural rules of the project:
- a maximum of 256,000 generated Heads;
- a maximum of 10,000 claimed Heads in the Collection;
- permanent closure of the Collection when the cap is reached;
- generation stops after closure;
- final burn of all remaining unclaimed Heads;
- distinction between First Edition and Clone;
- PNG image format, 24×24;
- format of the Nostr ownership proofs;
- the project’s canonical relay.
The Genesis Manifest has this event ID:
b0791ea7e7f4691b4d53ac80b87e3e43f48192f30ad13f485628612741cdd070This is the most stable part of the project: the limits, the closure, the final burn, the First Edition/Clone semantics, and the format of the public proofs.
Other mechanics, instead, belong to the experimental nature of Decaputin and may evolve: Value formulas, pricing, trait probabilities, asset availability, Burning Wave intensity, Marketplace details, and technical implementation.
What remains
Decaputin is a live-born collection, not a series decided in advance.
The guillotine can generate up to 256,000 Heads, but only 10,000 can enter the Collection. Every claim is a choice that takes a Head out of the flow of possibilities and fixes it inside a public history: number, owner, traits, hashes, payment, Nostr signature, and Decaputin attestation.
Unclaimed Heads can leave the live claimable set. Traits can become rarer. Clones can gain or lose popularity. Value can change while the Collection progresses.
Collection #1 shows this in the simplest form: seer-polar-drip was generated Head number 46, but became the first slot of the Collection because someone chose it.
Decaputin’s guillotine spawns possibilities. Users decide which Heads enter the permanent memory of the Collection.