A collection in 4,000 works · Ethereum · 2026
Paper Trail
Complete · Revealed · Every work with its Origin Passport
Seven years of an archive, cut up and laid down again.
№ 2143 · The teaserThe Works
Thirty of the four thousand, each a film of the work assembling itself and ending on its Passport. Every one is a 1/1: pieces torn from the artist's own earlier works, laid by rules she set, with a figure and a ground from a model trained on her own work. Hover to play. Each number opens the work's Passport.
The Passport
PAPER TRAIL is the first NFT collection issued with RUTHVEN™ Origin Passports. A Passport is the record of a work: what it was cut from, how it was built, what it contains, and the evidence that lets anyone check it without trusting anyone. The records were written and anchored before the sale, sealed during the mint, and opened at the reveal.
Sources
Every source work cut into the collage, named by contract and token id, with the year and the piece taken. A derivative work that carries its ancestry with it.
Evidence
Content hashes for the artwork and its package, pinned to IPFS. A Merkle root over all 4,000 Passports was set on Ethereum before the mint opened; each Passport carries its proof.
For people and machines
Each Passport is a page and a JSON document, served through an API and an MCP server, so an AI agent can read a record and verify it before it acts.
“The machine leaves a paper trail. That is the point of it.”
Details
Facts of the collection, as they stand on chain. The contract is the authority if anything here ever differs.
- Artist
- Miss AL Simpson, Scotland. Award-winning cryptoartist and collage artist; sold at Sotheby's, New York, 2025.
- Collection
- PAPER TRAIL · 4,000 works, token N is work N · opensea.io/collection/paper-trail-missalsimpson
- Contract
0x6eE9aaE76d422Bf4eC27449EB83245A79adAe105· ERC-721 · Ethereum mainnet · Etherscan- Genuine
- PAPER TRAIL exists on Ethereum only, at the contract above. Copies that used the name on other chains are not the artist's.
- Issued
- Collectors first, 5 October 2026 · public 6 to 11 October 2026 · a stage for AI agents 7 to 11 October 2026 · closed by the artist with all 4,000 works in existence.
- Revealed
- 11 October 2026. Every token resolves to its artwork and its Passport on IPFS.
- Passports
- Issued by RUTHVEN AI LIMITED · ruthven.ai/origin/paper-trail/ · one page per work,
/NNNN/ - Anchor
- Collection root
0x16770c7562dcf6041a4f651ab9bb1ae597fed179436aa8027bf680451700b7f9· Ethereum block 26,102,679, before the mint opened - Machine
- The Archive Engine, built by the artist: reads the archive, cuts, places by her rules, adds a figure and a ground from a model fine-tuned on her own work, and writes down everything it did.
- Archive
- The works not taken in the opening week are held by the artist's studio, complete with their Passports. Available by enquiry and on OpenSea.
- Rights
- Copyright in the artworks remains with MISS AL SIMPSON LIMITED. Ownership of a token confers no rights in the artist's trademarks or source works.
The Archive
Thirty more of the works, as stills. The artist has worked on chain since 2019: thousands of works across many collections and several contracts. PAPER TRAIL re-issues that archive as material, and keeps the record of the re-issue inside every new work.
Collectors
The collectors who came through the door in the opening week received extra works from the artist at the close. Enquiries for works from the archive, exhibitions and press: studio@missalsimpson.com.