Glossary

Look up any word you meet in KURV or in these docs. Each one gets a short, plain definition and a link to the page that explains it properly.

Fees gathers every fee figure in one place. Read Risks and disclaimer before you rely on any number here.

The four Vault words people mix up

These four are different things, and confusing them is the single easiest way to lose money on any NFT site.

• Market Floor: the lowest price anyone is currently asking for a piece in a collection. Collectors set it, and it moves whenever someone lists or delists. It is the only figure KURV calls a floor, and KURV makes no promise about it.
• Vault Backing: the money in a collection’s Vault divided by the number of pieces that have a claim on it.
• Vault Exit: what you would actually receive today for selling one piece to the Vault: its backing less the 10% the Vault keeps and the collection’s royalty. Always smaller than the backing.
• Vault Inventory: the pieces the Vault holds after buying them back, which it can sell again, even when no piece is out. They have no claim on the backing.

A collection can have a high Market Floor and a tiny Vault Exit at the same time. See The Vault.

The basics

• NFT: A piece of digital art with one owner at a time. Ownership is recorded on a public network, so anyone can check who holds it.
• Piece: One NFT in a collection. KURV numbers them: #1, #2 and so on.
• Collection: A set of pieces with its own contract. Every collection launched on KURV has a Vault. The creator decides how much of each mint goes into it, from nothing at all.
• Layer and trait: A layer is one slot in the artwork, like Background or Headwear. A trait is one option for that slot, like Dunes or Cap. Every piece built from layers wears one trait from each layer.
• Network (or chain): The shared public record that stores who owns what. KURV runs on Base, a network run by Coinbase. KURV also runs on Solana.
• On chain: Written to the network, where anyone can read it and nobody can quietly edit it.
• Contract: The program on the network that records who owns each piece of a collection and enforces its rules. Every KURV collection gets its own.
• Wallet: Your account on the network. It holds your key, your coins and your pieces, and signs for you. You get one when you log in. Only you can move what is in it.
• Sign and signature: Approving an action with your wallet. Every launch, mint and sell-back is one signature; a first listing, offer or market purchase may need one approval first.
• Coin: What a collection is priced in. Each collection is priced in one coin its creator picks at launch: USDC by default, or any other coin on Base. Every price on that collection is in that coin. The creator sets it in the Bought in box, and it stays for the life of the collection.
• USDC: A digital dollar, issued by Circle. One USDC is worth one US dollar. It is the default coin for a collection, and the coin every network fee is paid in.
• Coinbase: The company that runs KURV’s login, makes your wallet and pays the network fee on your behalf.
• Ticker: A short code of capital letters shown beside a collection’s name on marketplaces, like a stock symbol. The creator sets it at launch.
• Marketplace: Any site where pieces are bought and sold. KURV’s own is the Explore page.
• Seaport: The open trading system KURV’s marketplace runs on. Many NFT marketplaces use it.
• IPFS: The public file network where a collection’s images and labels are stored. Anyone can fetch from it.

Making a collection

• Generative collection: A collection built from layers. The app builds each piece by combining your layer art, so every piece differs. See Prepare your layers.
• Finished art: Pieces you made somewhere else, one file each, with a metadata.json that lists them. KURV publishes each file exactly as it is. See Bring art you already made.
• Bring a collection: Adding a collection already on Base, launched somewhere else, to KURV’s market. It trades here at its own royalty, up to 10%; a collection asking more can be brought over but not traded here. See Explore and trade.
• Pinned piece: A piece whose traits you choose yourself. Its combination is taken out of the random pool, so no other piece can match it.
• Seed: The long code a build starts from. The same seed, with the same layers and settings, rebuilds the same collection piece for piece.
• Provenance fingerprint: A short code made from your whole build and recorded on chain before anyone mints. The contract stores it and does not check the art against it; anyone can check the files against it.
• Pinning (files): Keeping a copy of your files on IPFS so they stay reachable. KURV pins them for you. Nothing to do with a pinned piece.
• Publish: Putting a collection’s images and labels on IPFS. Done once, before you launch. See Publish your files.

Selling and minting

• Mint: Getting a piece for the first time, straight from the collection’s contract. Also the name of the page where you do it.
• Sale method: How people buy from a collection. Chosen at launch. See Sale methods.
• Phase: A window of time with its own price and limits, and an allowlist if you want one. A launch has one phase or several. Each phase launches with the price you set, fixed or rising, and Your collections has no control to change it.
• Allowlist: The wallets allowed to mint during a phase.
• Mystery mint: A sale where the art stays hidden behind an image before the reveal until the creator reveals it.
• Rising price: A sale method where each piece costs a little more than the one before, from a first price to a last price the creator sets.
• Reveal: On a mystery mint, swapping the image before the reveal for the real art. It cannot be undone, and the same signature freezes the art.
• Freeze: Locking the art and labels for good. The mint page then shows Art locked forever. The collection details are not part of the art, and the owner can still change them.
• Invitation: What lets a logged-in wallet mint, trade, publish and launch. It comes as a link from the KURV team, which you open and log in on; a few people get a one-time code instead. See Your invitation.

Money, fees and the Vault

Every amount is in the collection’s coin. Network fees are separate from every fee below.

• Mint fee: KURV’s 5% of the price of a paid mint.
• Mint share: The part of a paid mint the creator keeps: 0% to 100% of what is left after KURV’s 5%. The rest becomes Vault Backing. Buyers see the share before they pay.
• Vault top-up: What a mint adds on top of the phase price when the part of that price reaching the Vault is below the Vault Backing per piece. All of it goes into the Vault, and no fee is taken on it.
• Service fee: $0.25 to KURV for each piece minted on a free mint, charged in the collection’s coin. Charged per piece, not per transaction, to the person minting. Paid mints never pay it.
• Royalty: One trading fee of 5%, the same on every KURV collection. It applies to sales between collectors, to sell-backs and to Vault resales. It comes out of what the seller receives and is never added to the buyer’s price. Split 50% creator, 25% Vault, 25% KURV when paid in the collection’s own coin, as every sale on KURV’s market is; paid in any other coin on another marketplace, 75% creator and 25% KURV. Mints and gifts carry none.
• Vault: A pool of the collection’s coin held for one collection. It buys pieces back, keeps them as inventory, and can sell them again, even when no piece is out. Every collection launched on KURV has a Vault, and it can hold $0. The creator decides how much of each mint goes into it, from nothing at all, and a Vault that opens at $0 is normal.
• Backing: The money in a collection’s Vault that stands behind its pieces. It belongs to the collection. Money leaves the Vault only on a sell-back, which pays the seller and the royalty’s creator and KURV shares. Nobody can withdraw it.
• Sell-back: Selling your piece to its own collection’s Vault. You receive the Vault Exit, the Vault keeps 10% of the piece’s backing (charged alongside the royalty, not after it), and the piece goes into the Vault Inventory.
• Vault resale: The Vault selling a returned piece again. It asks the piece’s Vault Backing plus 20%. Only the royalty applies, and the Vault keeps everything except the creator’s and KURV’s shares. It sells only when that covers the backing the piece needs.
• Contribution: money sent to a Vault directly through its contract; all of it becomes Vault Backing.

Every route, worked through on $100, with a 50% mint share and the 5% royalty:

Route	Seller gets	Creator	Vault	KURV
Paid mint at $100	None	$47.50	$47.50	$5.00
Sale between collectors at $100	$95.00	$2.50	$1.25	$1.25
Sell-back, piece carrying $100 of backing	$85.00	$2.50	$11.25	$1.25
Vault resale at $100	None	$2.50	$96.25	$1.25

Four free pieces cost $1.00 in service fees.

Wallets and network costs

• Network fee: What the chain charges to write anything. Also called gas. KURV receives none of it. You pay it in USDC, taken in the same step as your action, so your wallet needs no ETH. On Base the network fee always comes out of your own USDC.
• ETH: The coin the Base network itself charges fees in. The paymaster handles it for you.
• Paymaster: The Coinbase service that pays the network in ETH for you and takes the same value from your USDC.
• Base: One of the two networks KURV runs on, beside Solana. A creator picks one at launch.
• Solana: The other network KURV runs on. Its network fee is in SOL, with a small storage charge for each new account.