Getting started
Pons is an NFT launchpad where the token is not a picture. It is a WGSL fragment shader and a 256-bit seed. The metadata stores the source and the parameters the seed produced, and the artwork gets rebuilt live, in the browser, every time someone opens it.
What pons is
A normal NFT points at a JPEG on someone's server. If that server disappears, so does the art. A token here instead carries a shader (plain WGSL, the shading language WebGPU runs) plus a set of numeric parameters. Any device with WebGPU can recompile the shader and render the exact same image, at any resolution, forever. The chain and the database only need to remember which numbers to feed it.
Collections are groups of tokens that share one shader. Minting a token from a collection assigns it a token number, and that number (combined with the collection's id) deterministically produces a seed and a set of parameter values within ranges the creator declared. Nobody, including the creator, picks the seed or previews it before minting.
Every token also gets a server-rendered PNG still, used for marketplace previews, social cards, and as a fallback on devices without WebGPU. The still is generated on demand at /api/render/[slug]/[token] and cached hard, since the same seed always renders the same frame.
How minting works
You connect a wallet
If it's on the wrong network, the app prompts a switch to Robinhood Chain before anything else happens.
The chain assigns a number
Minting increments the collection's counter. That number is the input to the seed, not a choice you make.
The seed becomes parameters
A deterministic generator maps the seed into the ranges the creator declared for this collection.
Your browser renders it
The shader compiles and runs on your GPU the moment you look at the token. There is no image file to lose.
Pons supports two minting modes depending on whether the launchpad contract is deployed for the current environment. On-chain mode sends a real transaction to PonsLaunchpad, which is the source of truth for the token number and the ETH payment. Off-chain mode (used while the contract is not yet deployed) allocates the next token number directly against the database and never represents itself as a real transaction. Both modes derive the seed the same way, so the art a token ends up with never depends on which mode minted it. See the contract for what changes on-chain.
Wallet setup for Robinhood Chain
Robinhood Chain is an Arbitrum Orbit L2 that settles to Ethereum, public on mainnet since July 2026. Gas is paid in ETH, same as Ethereum itself. Point any EVM wallet at it with these values:
Most wallets connected through the site add and switch to Robinhood Chain automatically when you try to mint. You only need these values if you are adding the network by hand.
If your browser has no WebGPU
Live rendering needs a WebGPU-capable browser: current Chrome, Edge, or Safari 18 and newer. Anywhere else, pons falls back to the server-rendered PNG still automatically, so a token page never shows a blank canvas, only a static frame instead of a moving one.