A drop is a collection put on sale with a mechanism and a clock. Nothing about its state is a manual switch: it moves because a date passes or because the pieces run out.
The three mechanisms
| Mechanism | How a piece is acquired |
|---|---|
| Mint | You pay the mint price and the piece is inscribed for you |
| Airdrop | Pieces are distributed at no cost |
| Auction | Each bid raises the price by a fixed step; the last bidder takes the piece |
A drop can additionally be configured so that holders of another collection can claim a piece for free. That is a property of the drop, not a fourth mechanism.
The badge on the card is what tells them apart at a glance:
The clock
Two dates govern a drop, and they are set when it is created:
| Date | What it does |
|---|---|
| Start date | Until it passes, the drop is scheduled. It cannot be scheduled inside the restricted hours the platform reserves |
| Idle deadline | Start date + 1 days, or + 5 days if the creator is verified. When it passes, the minting window is over |
The longer window for verified creators is a subscription benefit, and it is frozen into the drop when the drop is created — it does not depend on who is looking at the page.
Not everybody starts at the same time
A scheduled drop does not open for everyone at once. Each user rank adds its own delay on top of the start date, so higher ranks — the ones holding rarer pieces — reach zero first and can mint before the rest. If your countdown has not finished, the page shows you your own, not somebody else's.
Eventually every rank's delay expires and the drop is open to everybody.
Before a drop opens, its card carries a countdown to the start date — and remember it is your countdown, not everybody's:
The states
| State | How you can tell | What ends it |
|---|---|---|
| Scheduled | Start date in the future; the hall shows a countdown | the start date, per rank |
| Live | Started, pieces left, deadline not reached | selling out, or the deadline |
| Sold out | Every piece minted | nothing — it is final |
| Finished | Past the idle deadline | — |
For an auction, "finished" needs one more condition: the drop is not over while any piece still has a live bid running. A bid keeps its own clock, and the drop waits for it.
While a drop is live, this is how far along it is — minted out of total:
37 / 50
What happens to what nobody minted
This is the part that surprises people. When the idle deadline passes with pieces unsold:
- the remaining pieces are converted into an airdrop, and
- the drop leaves the active listing.
So a drop that started as a mint can end up as an airdrop. Its original mechanism is not lost: the drop remembers what it was created as, and when the two differ the interface shows both — that is what the dual badge on a drop means.
Featured drops are exempt from the conversion: they stay as they are.
The idle deadline is not a reservation. It does not hold pieces for anybody. It is a deadline: what is not minted by then stops being for sale and gets given away.
Visibility
Three independent flags decide where a drop appears:
| Flag | Effect |
|---|---|
| live | Appears in the mint zone hall |
| silent | Hidden from the hall, but the direct link still works |
| featured | Highlighted in the hall, and exempt from the airdrop conversion |
A silent drop is not a private drop: anyone with the URL can open and use it. It is unlisted, not protected.