I.
Potential user
You want to know what this is and whether to participate.
- Read Narrative · Why eDMT.
- Skim the FAQ.
- Open Mint and observe a block.
Canonical documentation.
Protocol-layer rules are public and immutable. Application layers may evolve; narrative and FAQ continue to expand.
Three kinds of documents.
The protocol spec is the foundation, frozen once public. Application layers may continue to evolve. Narrative and FAQ are written explanations — we add to them over time.
protocol/
Protocol layer
The protocol layer has no contract, administrator, pause key, or upgrade key. Its rules come from calldata semantics and deterministic indexing, not mutable contract storage.
- Public protocol specification: calldata format, mint capture fee, transfer, FIFO, first-is-first, and burn semantics.
- Public indexer specification: replay, reorg, finality, and convergence requirements for compliant indexers.
contracts/
Contracts reference
Anyone may fork. Each fork is the responsibility of whoever forks it.
- Application-layer contract documentsNot part of the public protocol package. The first public repository contains only the protocol-layer minimum trust base, not wrapper or marketplace specifications.
narrative/
Narrative & culture
Why eDMT is designed this way, the trade-offs behind it, and common questions.
- Opens in this site.
- Technical overview — cross-layer walkthroughNot included in the public protocol repository.
- Opens in this site.
Entry points by reader.
Each role has a recommended path through the canon. You may always read out of order — nothing you read later will contradict what you read first.
II.
Protocol engineer
You want to run a compliant indexer or audit protocol rules.
- Read protocol/00 end to end.
- Read protocol/05 implementation spec.
- Run a reference indexer alongside your own and diff the state.
III.
Smart-contract engineer
You want to implement or audit the ERC wrappers and marketplace.
- Read protocol/00 for the hard rules contracts depend on.
- Read contracts/06 including §1.5 'custody = signature'.
- Diff your implementation against the reference ABI.
IV.
Protocol researcher
You want to understand the reasoning or fork the design.
- Read all layers end to end in order 00 → 05 → 06 → narrative.
- Focus on 'trust assumption' and 'anti-pattern' sections.
- Write down where your fork disagrees and justify each divergence.
Core terms.
- eDMT
- Ethereum Digital Matter — a token protocol on Ethereum mainnet, where minting is based on a block's EIP-1559 burn.
- eNAT
- First ticker under eDMT; one block, one eNAT, indivisibly tied to that block's EIP-1559 burn.
- burn(N)
- floor(baseFeePerGas(N) × gasUsed(N) / 10^9), unit: gwei.
- first-is-first
- For a given block N, ownership goes forever to the first on-chain emt-mint tx that captures it.
- capture fee
- A raw-fragment fee required for post-activation emt-mint targets. It is determined by rolling median burn and mint congestion, then drained from the sender's fragment_balance FIFO and burned.
- whole
- A complete eNAT tied to a single block, carrying its full burn balance.
- fragment
- A sub-gwei balance produced when a whole is partially transferred; FIFO-ordered per address.
- src
- Required field on emt-transfer calldata: "«blk»" for whole view, "balance" for fragment view.
- Indexer
- Program that decodes ETH mainnet calldata into eDMT state — it does not create facts, it reports them.
- Protocol Operator
- Single externally owned account (EOA) controlled by the founder; protocol-layer owner of all wrapped assets. Not a multisig — see /transparency for the trust model.
- Oracle
- Hypothetical multi-indexer witness scheme that would feed application-layer contracts with indexer state. Not implemented in v1; the wrapper contracts trust the operator EOA's view directly.