# Where the art actually lives

What is really on chain for ordinals, Solana inscriptions and ordinary NFTs, what dies when a host or marketplace dies, and the record Mantel keeps so the art and its makers stay findable.

Published 2026-09-04, updated 2026-09-03. https://mantel.gallery/guides/where-the-art-actually-lives

> Owning on-chain art means one of three things. A Bitcoin inscription and a Libreplex Solana inscription are the strongest case, the artwork's bytes are written into the chain itself, and any node re-serves them forever. An ordinary NFT is a pointer, the token is on chain and the image lives wherever the minter put it, which is why 1,817 pieces on Mantel have no image left anywhere. And everything around the art, the names, the hashlists, the artist directories, lives in marketplace databases that vanish with the marketplace, which is why Mantel walked the programs of Formfunction and Exchange Art after they closed and keeps the record in its own database: the first 100,000 Solana mints in order, both inscription censuses, seventy early sets, 9,635 archived hashlists and 16,649 named artists.

The phrase "on-chain art" covers three very different arrangements, and which one a piece has decides what can be lost. It is worth knowing which of them you own.

## Bytes in the chain: the art that cannot go down

A Bitcoin inscription is the artwork itself, written into the witness data of the transaction that created it. It is not a link to the art, it is the art, and it is as permanent as the block it landed in. Every full node on earth carries it, and a viewer like ordinals.com is just a lens; if the lens breaks, any other node serves the same bytes.

Solana has the same thing, less known: Libreplex inscriptions, from early 2024, before Metaplex shipped its rival program. A Libreplex inscription writes the raw file into an account on chain, keyed to the NFT it decorates. The indexers never picked the program up, which is why a wallet full of them shows no badge anywhere else; Mantel reads the accounts directly and renders those images straight from the chain, no host involved.

The first 10,000 of them were people choosing what to write into Solana before the ticker flood, and Mantel keeps that census: 9,512 of the 10,000 still exist on chain. The other 488 were erased by whoever held their authority, which is the only way on-chain art disappears, on purpose, with the keys. Nothing hosted can do that well.

## A pointer on chain: most NFTs

An ordinary NFT, on either chain's standards, is a token that points at a metadata file that points at an image. The token is permanent. The two files are wherever the minter put them: Arweave if the launchpad paid for permanence, IPFS if someone is still pinning, or a plain web host if nobody thought about it in 2021.

Those hosts die. Solchan's metadata lived on a Vercel deployment that was deleted; 1,817 pieces on Mantel's shelf have no image left anywhere, no live host and no Wayback copy, and no script will ever find one. That is the honest failure mode of the pointer model, and it is why the Save tool exists: the token in your wallet outlives the image unless somebody keeps a copy.

## In a database: everything around the art

The third category is the least visible and dies the most often. Collection names, hashlists, artist profiles, curation, sale history: almost none of it is on chain. It lives in the marketplace's own database, and when the marketplace closes, it closes.

Solana's 1/1 era mostly happened on two venues that no longer exist. Formfunction opened in February 2022 and closed on 29 March 2023. Exchange Art followed on 1 August 2026. Both took their artist directories with them.

What survives is the chain, and the chain is enough to rebuild the index. Mantel walked both marketplaces' on-chain programs, collected every mint that ever traded there and resolved each to the wallet that signed it, counting only verified creator signatures, the one credit that cannot be faked. That recovered 2,956 Formfunction artists and 9,433 Exchange Art artists, with their collection names, piece counts and sale volumes, committed into Mantel's own files. For work that never moved to another venue, those rosters are now the only index of it that exists.

The same goes for hashlists, the plain lists of mints that define a pre-2022 collection. They were never on chain, they lived with whichever marketplace built them, and they die the same way. Mantel's archive holds 9,635 collections and 433,431 mints of them.

## The record, in numbers

Everything above lands in one place, Mantel's own database and committed files, read locally when a page renders rather than fetched from somebody else's API that might not answer next year:

| What | Count |
| --- | --- |
| Solana mints, numbered in mint order from the chain | the first 100,000 |
| Bitcoin inscriptions, #0 to #99,999 | 100,000 |
| Solana inscriptions of the first 10,000, live on chain | 9,512 |
| Early Solana sets, every piece with traits | 70 sets, 454,894 pieces |
| Archived hashlists | 9,635 collections, 433,431 mints |
| Named artists | 16,649 |
| Recovered marketplace rosters | Formfunction 2,956, Exchange Art 9,433 |

None of this needed permission and none of it can be taken back by a shutdown, because the sources were the chains themselves and the copies are ours.

## What to do with yours

If you hold pieces you care about, two things are worth an afternoon. Save a local copy, the token outlives the image and a zip on your disk is the cheapest permanence there is. And if you made the work, sign it, the verified creator signature is the one credit that survives every marketplace that will ever close.

## Questions

**Are NFT images stored on the blockchain?**

Usually not. For most NFTs the chain holds the token and a URL, and the image sits on Arweave, IPFS or an ordinary web host the minter chose. Bitcoin inscriptions and Libreplex Solana inscriptions are the exception, their bytes are in the chain itself. Everything in between fails differently, an Arweave file outlives its uploader, a pinned IPFS file lives while someone pins it, and a plain web host lives until the bill stops being paid.

**What happens to my NFTs when a marketplace shuts down?**

Nothing on chain changes, the tokens stay in your wallet. What dies is everything the marketplace kept in its own database, collection names, hashlists, artist profiles, listing history and cached images. Formfunction closed in March 2023 and Exchange Art in August 2026, and both took their artist directories with them. The chain still proves who signed what, which is how those rosters were rebuilt.

**Can a Bitcoin inscription's image go down?**

No. The artwork is witness data inside the transaction that inscribed it, so it is part of Bitcoin's history and every full node carries it. A viewer site like ordinals.com can go down, but it is only a lens, any node re-serves the same bytes. The same holds for Libreplex inscriptions on Solana, where the file sits in an account on chain, Mantel renders those images straight from the chain.

**How does Mantel know who made a piece if the marketplace is gone?**

From the chain, using the verified creator signature. A creator listed in metadata is a claim anyone can write, but the verified bit is an on-chain signature that cannot be faked. Walking a dead marketplace's program recovers every mint that traded there and the address that signed it, which is how 2,956 Formfunction artists and 9,433 Exchange Art artists came back after their sites went dark.

Data on this page: Counts from Mantel's database on 3 September 2026: 100,000 early mints, 100,000 early Bitcoin inscriptions, 9,512 of the first 10,000 Solana inscriptions live on chain, 454,894 pieces across seventy sets, 16,649 named artists. Hashlist archive counts and the Formfunction and Exchange Art walks from the committed rosters. Solchan's 1,817 imageless pieces measured against its dead metadata host.