MARSBIRDSTHE MIDNIGHT HANGAR

Live on Midnight mainnet

reading chain state

MarsBirds · Midnight mainnet · since Oct 1, 2026

MarsBirds are live on Midnight.

Midnight is a new blockchain built alongside Cardano. Minutes after its mainnet opened to new contracts, the first twenty MarsBirds were minted there, each one a full pixel painting stored inside the contract. No links. No outside files. Nothing that can go missing.

The only way to get the next one is to win it in a Burn Battle. Nobody has seen it yet.

How to get one

Right now you can't buy one. You win one.

  1. 1
    Get a fighter on Cardano Any MarsBird or Martian Spawn in your Cardano wallet can fight, using the wallet you already have. No fighter yet? Mint a Martian Spawn or find a MarsBird on the marketplace.
  2. 2
    Win a Burn Battle Two NFTs fight on marsbirds.com. The loser is burned forever. The winner gets a brand-new MarsBird minted on Midnight.
  3. 3
    We hold it until you're ready Midnight is a separate chain, so your Cardano wallet won't show it. We hold your bird for you, and this page shows it with your name on it, until you move it to a Midnight wallet.
Next prize MarsBirds Prize #2 Nobody has seen this bird yet. Its look comes from the battle's own random seed, locked in before the fight and revealed after it. 8,867 of 8,888 still unminted

The first twenty

Twenty birds, minted the day mainnet opened.

Twenty Cardano NFTs were given up to found this collection, and each of these birds carries the name of one of them, written into its token for anyone to check.

  1. 19:40 UTCMidnight opens to new contractsOur watcher had been checking every 10 minutes for five weeks.
  2. 19:45 UTCThe MarsBirds contract goes liveThe first new contract on mainnet after the opening. Block 2,827,344.
  3. 19:46 to 19:54All twenty birds are mintedAbout one every 25 seconds, each picture written straight into the contract.
  4. Same nightEvery block on mainnet checked169 contracts have ever been deployed. This is the only art collection.
20birds minted
8,888most there can ever be, sealed in the contract
169contracts ever deployed on Midnight mainnet
1of them is an art collection

reading Midnight mainnet

Won in battle

After the first twenty, birds are won, never sold.

In a Burn Battle, two NFTs fight. The loser is burned forever, and the winner gets a brand-new MarsBird minted on Midnight, into the same collection as the first twenty. Pick one to see everything the chain holds about it. Replays play back on marsbirds.com, which asks you to connect a wallet at the door.

reading the prize ledger

Why it's different

Three things worth knowing.

1 · the picture
The image is the token
Most NFTs store a link to a picture and hope that link still works in ten years. These store the picture itself, every byte of it, inside the contract. There is no file to lose. If every server we own went dark tomorrow, the owls would still be there.
2 · the proof
Checked twice, every time
Every bird on this page is read from two separate services and the two answers are compared. If they ever disagree, the page tells you instead of quietly picking one. The details are in the console.
3 · the chain
Midnight is not Cardano
MarsBirds and Martian Spawn live on Cardano. These owls live on Midnight, a separate chain, so your Cardano wallet won't show them. That's expected. Every MarsBird here lives on Midnight mainnet. Until an owner takes theirs, we hold each bird for them.

The console

Nothing above is taken on faith, and nothing has been removed to make the page look tidier. This is the machinery: the two-source check in detail, any Midnight contract you care to paste, the owner lookup, and the server's own health. Our older test contracts on Midnight's Preprod testnet are still readable here; those tokens have no monetary value.

Open the console verification detail, explore any contract, owner lookup, service health

The two-source check, in detail

Source 1
reading…
Source 2
reading…
Agreement
reading…

Explore any contract

Paste any Midnight contract address. If we hold its compiled artifacts you get a schema decode; if we do not, you get the honest byte-scan and a label saying so.

Owner view

The input is a Zswap coin public key: 32 raw bytes, 64 hex characters, exactly as stored in the contract's tokenOwner map. It is not an mn_addr… wallet address and not an mn_dust… address; pasting either will never match. The server cross-checks its own scan against the contract's ownedTokensCount and answers unknown rather than hand back a list it cannot vouch for.

Service health and registry

reading