FAQ
Last update: Jan 18, 2024

What is Etheria?

Etheria is a map of ownable, tradable, hexagonal metaverse land tiles on the Ethereum blockchain. Four fully decentralized, fully viable versions of the same 33x33 map were deployed in October 2015 and are now combined into a single map available for viewing here.

Fastest, easiest way to get up to speed with Etheria? This video.

What's the supply?

Each version of the map has 457 ownable land tiles and 632 unownable ocean tiles for total of 457*4 = 1,828 tiles, though we estimate 5-10% are permanently lost.

When was Etheria deployed?

I thought Project X was first. Was Etheria really first?

In the vintage NFT space, "first" is a claim asserted by many different groups about many different assets, usually by twisting the term "NFT" to suit a particular asset. It's a deep and fascinating topic that's way too complicated for this FAQ, but the TL;DR is this: Etheria is the first project to unambiguously check all the boxes of what people consider an NFT today.

More details here.

Can you build on a tile?

YES! Etheria's original build mechanisms were... inefficient. While this didn't matter much for a passing experiment when Ethereum was $0.43 and the network was empty, using those old build mechanisms in the modern era is astronomically expensive. To solve this problem in 2021, I (Cyrus, the dev) created a system where the unlimited character "name" field of each tile is now used to store both the name of the tile as well as compressed, highly-efficient build data. Now builds are 95% less expensive and new ones are going up all the time! Whew!

How do I buy a tile?

https://etheria.world/exchange.html

I see Etherias v0.9 and v1.0 on Opensea... why don't Etherias v1.1 and v1.2 show up as well?

2015 was early days and there was a lot to figure out about this new thing called Ethereum. In the process of trying to fix a (now irrelevant) "stuck ETH" bug in v1.0, I incorrectly used tx.origin instead of msg.sender in v1.1 and v1.2 for verifying tile ownership. Unfortunately, this means that base v1.1+ tiles can only be owned by EOAs, not by smart contracts, and, thus, cannot be wrapped.

Certain Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) are circulating that may correct the tx.origin issue at the EVM level (as it's widely agreed tx.origin should have never been exposed in Solidity in the first place), so we're currently waiting to see if one of them materializes, enabling true wrapping.

In the meantime, we've developed a working custom wrapper that makes v1.1+ wrappable with some minor technical drawbacks. But we're holding off on its deployment to see if true wrapping becomes possible over the next few months or years. The long and short: Either an EVM-level fix makes v1.1+ wrappable or we'll go forward with our custom wrapper. For now, we wait.

Where is the contract code for Etheria?

You can view and manually verify Etheria's smart contract code via this repository: https://github.com/cyrusadkisson/etheria_source or on Etherscan.

Which tiles are worth more/less?

Value is subjective, but generally has to do with version significance, version modernity (is the tile wrappable? how likely is the tile to be wrappable one day?), rarity and/or appearance. Without getting in the way of the market making up its own mind, it's safe to say that Islands, Mountains, Ice and Tundra are more prized than others.

Can I use a multi-sig to store my tile? Can I send my tile to a contract?

Wrapped v0.9 and v1.0 → yes
Unwrapped (any version) → NO! You will lose your tile.

What's with all the versions and the "unification"?

That story is best told through this video or this Twitter thread. More info:

In March 2021, shortly after Etheria's rediscovery, I (Cyrus) bought up all the remaining tiles in two earlier versions of Etheria I found in my deployment history due to concerns about their trading safety. These earlier base contracts feature internal trade logic which, in both versions, is awkward and impractical and, especially in v0.9, unsafe to use unless great care is taken to prevent front-running.

After a year of heads-down development on v1.2 (exchanges, world rendering, etc), I finally realized a few things about these 2 earlier contracts:

1. They're wrappable, modernizable for OpenSea, etc
2. Once wrapped, the old trade logic is entirely bypassed and irrelevant (i.e. trading is made safe)

Knowing the above and for a number of reasons, in March 2022, I made the decision to wrap and airdrop these versions to the "official" holders of v1.2 and create a 4-map Etheria Multiverse consisting of:

• v0.9, the first viable, fully-decentralized NFT smart contract ever (2015-10-19)
• v1.0, the first official release of Etheria, announced on Reddit (2015-10-22)
• v1.1, the second official release of Etheria, announced on blog (2015-10-29)
• v1.2, the "final" official release of Etheria, presented at Devcon 1 (2015-11-01)

How do I manage the tiles I own?

Use the Tile Manager for wrapped v1.0- and unwrapped v1.1+ tiles.
Use the wrapping page to wrap unwrapped v1.0- tiles.

What's the difference between the 4 versions?

v0.9 is the first viable version of Etheria, according to my extensive research into my own blockchain history. I deployed some earlier test versions of Etheria but they were either killable (and I killed them) or developmentally incomplete in such a way that the tiles were either non-transferrable (worthless) or always stealable (also worthless). Hence v0.9 as "first viable". And it's wrappable via normal methods.

v1.0 is the first official release interacted with by people other than myself. I announced it on reddit. This version is also wrappable via normal methods.

v1.1 is the second official release which I noted in my blog at the time and on the official website, but did not otherwise announce. This is the first version to use a simple setOwner (which was smart) but also used tx.origin (which was dumb). The latter means this version is not wrappable by normal methods, though it may ultimately prove wrappable by non-traditional methods. We're working through that now and have been unable to knock down our current working theory (which is positive). All v1.0 tile ownership was mirrored onto v1.1 immediately after deployment and then the contract was locked.

v1.2 is the final official release which I presented at Devcon 1 in 2015 and which saw significant interaction from the small community at the time, though even this version didn't sell out back then. It contains the first real on-chain artworks in the cabin, the horse, the colosseum, etc. Same wrappability notes as v1.1. All v1.1 tile ownership was mirrored onto v1.2 immediately after deployment and then the contract was locked.

When were Etheria's tiles first minted?

"Minting" is a relatively new concept in NFTs. When a person "mints" an NFT, the blockchain space and information about that NFT are reserved and written at that time.

For example, as BAYC began to mint in 2021, there were no Bored Apes at all - no blockchain space dedicated to them whatsoever. Then, one-by-one, as they were minted, the blockchain space and links to the external art were created as people clicked the "mint" button.

Etheria's 1089 tiles (457 purchasable land) (per version), on the other hand, all came into existence at the same time in 2015. Each tile was initialized with a column, row, elevation, empty "name", empty "status" and the owner was set to "0x0000....0000".

As people bought the tiles in 2015, 2016, 2017 and finally 2021, no new blockchain space was created. The owner of the tile was simply set to the address of the new owner like this: 0x0000...0000 → 0xabc1...2345

All tiles have a "status" string field. What is it?

The status field is just a text field which was originally meant to allow people to update their status and have that status auto-Tweet through the official Etheria account. To prevent spam, a fee of 1 ETH was hardcoded to change a tile's status ($0.43 at the time; Etheria predates stablecoins, too.) Whoops! So that field is basically dead for now. It's not connected to the Twitter account anyway.