a watch outlives everyone who forgets it.

I · The watches

There are 256, numbered 1 to 256, and every one is already drawn: its metal, dial, numerals, hands and case lining are a hash of its number, settled before anybody could choose. There will never be a 257th.

II · Claiming

Anybody can claim an unclaimed watch by burning HEIR. The burn starts at 2,000 and rises by 50 with every watch claimed, and it goes to the dead address. The watch arrives wound.

III · Winding

A wound watch runs for fourteen days. Winding it is free, only its holder can do it, and it resets the fourteen days. The hands on the dial stand at the minute it was last wound; the small dial shows what is left in the mainspring.

IV · Stopping

Miss the fourteen days and the watch stops. A stopped watch can never be wound again by the holder who let it stop, and it cannot be sold, listed or given. It passes on.

V · The heir

A holder may name an heir at any time — any address that has never held that watch. (You cannot name yourself, or anybody who has held it before.) Naming an heir also winds the watch. When the watch stops, its heir has three days to take it, free.

VI · The estate

If no heir was named, or the heir doesn't come within three days, the stopped watch becomes an open estate: anybody who has never held it may take it by burning 2,000 HEIR. A late heir can still take it free.

VII · The lineage

Every hand a watch passes through lights one mark on its minute track, in order from twelve o'clock: red for a watch that passed by will or estate, the dial's ink for one claimed, bought or given. The generation engraved on the case counts successions only. Nobody can buy a generation. Only silence makes one.

VIII · Selling and giving

A running watch can be listed and bought inside the contract — nothing escrowed, 95% to the holder, 5% burned — or given to any other address. Either way it arrives wound, with no heir named, and it is a new hand but not a new generation.

IX · What the contract cannot do

Hold ETH (nothing is payable). Hold anybody's HEIR or watch. Mint outside the burn. Wind a watch for you. Restart a stopped watch. Take a royalty. Pause. Upgrade. The owner key names the token once and is inert forever after.