Argonauts minted on Aug 26 as still 24×24 pixel skulls. The art lives inside the contract, and a.c.k. can swap the code that draws it. He's done that ten times in seven weeks. Here's what each update changed and which traits got the upgrade. Every image on this page is rendered by the contract itself.
Each step below is a setRenderer transaction on the Argonauts contract. The thumbnails are the same token read just before and just after that transaction.
9,999 static pixel portraits: palette, bones, and up to five optional slots (cloak, relic, sight, artifact, crown). Nothing moves.
The Woodpipe gets redrawn as a proper brown pipe. Vapes get flavor-colored tips, blue for Blueberry Kush and green for Dragon's Breath, and that's when the two vape names show up in the metadata. Alien skulls pick up accent pixels in their own palette color.
Lens colors get reworked. The designer brands start pulling apart (Balenciaga goes hot pink, LV moves to a wraparound bar), regular Glasses get a cleaner blue, and the 3D Glasses frames get reshaped.
This one is mostly plumbing. Crowns sit properly now: band layering is fixed and the Purphat is clipped on Floral skulls. Each artifact gets its own smoke tone. It also adds the death mechanism (setDead, plus a clock contract), which is how 23 Argonauts have since burned.
The first Argonaut ever to move is #5266, the only Golden Fleece, which a.c.k. gave to Adam Weitsman. The contract notes list four stages, Fleece, Bones, Smoke and Sight, and that turns out to be the roadmap for Oct 2.
The renderer can now override a token's traits. #8393 and #7920 were the only two Radioactives on Deep Raspberry. #8393 lost its Glasses and moved to Void Charcoal, which made it the only bare Radioactive. #7920 lost its Gold relic and 3D Glasses and gained an Ivory cloak.
The seven designer sights get fully redesigned. At mint, Dior, Gucci, LV, Versace, Balenciaga, Chanel and Prada all shared one frame in near-identical purples. Now each brand has its own shape and color: Dior is a violet visor, Versace navy, Gucci burgundy, Prada blue, and Chanel lilac. See the full set ↓
In one transaction, all 9,999 come alive. Bones breathe, Gold and Silver glint, Radioactive glows, Alien sparks, Coral pulses, and a bee visits the Florals. Pipes and vapes smoke, and lenses get a sheen. Digital Sight turns into a 7×3 screen with 41 shows. 3D Glasses become the only thing you can click. The marketplace image turns into an animated SVG too, so thumbnails move.
#8985 burned on Oct 5 at 16:43 UTC. Eighteen minutes later, a.c.k. shipped a renderer that applies to that one token only. It burns for 23 days, with a new still each day, as fire and rust eat away its 3D Glasses and gold chain. As of today it's about nine days in. The other 22 burned tokens are flat squares of their palette color.
This was the first upgrade aimed at a palette. The 522 Storm Argonauts take lightning strikes on the head every 4–15 seconds, with a screen flash. The bones react: Bone and Petrified get a blue tide, Coral goes teal, Silver crackles with plasma, Prehistoric scorches and smokes, and a bee on a Floral can get struck out of the air. It's the only way a Petrified ever moves.
Every 1–3 minutes, water spreads down from the band and the whole skeleton turns liquid blue, with drips, bubbles and falling droplets. It holds for about 30 seconds and then drains. It applies to all 1,305 Oarsman's Band holders. The renderer contract isn't verified on Etherscan yet, so this comes from comparing the contract's output before and after.
There are 56 sets of seven Argonauts that are identical except for the designer brand. Here's one complete set, MuseGreen Coral, as it was drawn at mint and as it's drawn today.
Read from the live player code and confirmed by watching tokens run. Counts are living tokens.
| Trait | What it does now | Since | Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital Sight | Lenses become a 7×3 screen: 41 animations, scrolling text, and a per-token "signature" show | Oct 2 | 880 |
| 3D Glasses | Red/blue lenses alternate. Click to split the image into red/blue anaglyph and boost every animation 1.7×. The only clickable trait. | Oct 2 | 913 |
| Radioactive bones | Green glow pulse plus a halo bleeding into the palette | Oct 2 | 25 |
| Alien bones | Cyan sparks hop around the skull, faint blue pulse | Oct 2 | 9 |
| Gold / Silver bones | Glints flash across the brightest pixels (Gold 2, Silver 3) | Oct 2 | 88 / 1,295 |
| Floral bones | A bee flies in every 18–30s, lands, leaves | Oct 2 | 500 |
| Coral bones | Polyps pulse in a wave, plus sparkles | Oct 2 | 800 |
| Bone / Prehistoric | Slow breathing brightness | Oct 2 | 4,467 / 2,492 |
| Woodpipe / Vapes | Smoke curls up. Vape tips glow on each puff, and Dragon's Breath puffs slower. | Oct 2 | 2,986 / 2,866 |
| Shades, Glasses, 7 designers | A light sheen sweeps across the lenses | Oct 2 | 5,682 |
| Golden Fleece | Twinkle and gold sweep. The first token to move. | Sep 25 | 1 |
| Storm palette | Lightning strikes, with a reaction that depends on the bones | Oct 7 | 522 |
| Oarsman's Band | Every 1–3 min the skeleton turns to water for about 30s | Oct 14 | 1,305 |
76 living Argonauts have no animated trait at all. They're Petrified, wear no lensed sight, hold no pipe or vape, aren't on Storm, and have no Oarsman's Band or Fleece. They're the only static pieces left in an animated collection. Each of the ones checked returned zero animation frames from the contract.
Burned (23): . Burned tokens render as a flat square of their palette, except #8985 (above).
Left is the token at mint, or at its first render for tokens minted later. Right is the live player today. Drag the slider to step through every renderer in between. Players start when they scroll into view and loop.