You probably alreadyhave the key.
Founding a locked archive does not require inventing a currency. Haven asks a key exactly one question — does this address hold at least this much? — so anything that can answer it can be a key. If your community already has an NFT or a token, you are done choosing.
Test your assetTest any contractagainst the gate.
Paste any NFT or token contract and this will read it live and tell you, in plain terms, whether Haven can gate on it — what it is, what a balance means there, whether anything has been issued, and whether it answers the one call that matters.
What is a contract address?
Every NFT collection and every token is a program deployed at an address on a blockchain — a string starting 0x. That address is the collection's permanent identity: it cannot be renamed, transferred or faked.
You can find it on any marketplace or explorer listing for the collection, usually labelled "contract". Haven identifies gates by address rather than by name for exactly that reason: names are editorial, addresses are not.
What is the difference between an NFT and a token here?
An NFT collection (ERC-721) holds distinct items, so a balance is a count: holding two means holding two pieces. A threshold of one means "any piece from the collection".
A token (ERC-20) is divisible, so a balance is an amount. Thresholds become quantities — "hold at least 5,000" — and Haven converts for the token's decimal places itself, so you never have to write out base units.
Can I gate on something my community does not control?
Technically yes: gating only reads a balance, and reading is permissionless. Practically it is a bad idea. If you do not influence the asset, you have no say over who can reach your archive, and a large holder can hand access around without you.
The exception is a dead asset you buy into: a capped, fully-issued collection whose supply you sweep becomes yours in the only sense the gate cares about — the holder set. That trick only works where no more supply can appear, so not on anything still mintable, and the old stragglers who still hold pieces will pass your gate too.
Otherwise, gate on something your community actually holds and cares about. The asset becomes the membership boundary, so it should be one the community recognises as its own.
Making one is asmaller job than it sounds.
If you need a token, the publish wizard mints one for you — name and symbol in, bonding-curve token out, its address flowing straight into the gate. For anything else, the standard routes below still apply: deploy with whatever you already trust, then come back and test the address above.
- 01
Decide which kind you need
A collection if membership should be a thing people hold one of — a pass, an edition, a piece of the work. A token if membership should be a quantity, so that holding more means more, and small holders can be excluded by a threshold.
Most archives want a collection. Quantities invite the question of how much is enough, and that argument tends to outlive the archive.
- 02
Generate and deploy it
If a token is what you need, you do not need to leave: the publish wizard's gate step offers to mint a bonding-curve token for the archive — a standard linear curve on the native reserve — and hands its address back to the gate above. For a collection, or a token with custom tokenomics, use one of the standard routes instead: you do not need to write Solidity, and you certainly should not write it for this.
The external routes are widely used third parties, not endorsements or integrations. For assets deployed outside the wizard, Haven never sees the deployment; it only ever reads the finished contract.
What does deploying cost?
A one-off gas fee on whichever chain you choose, paid to the network rather than to any company. It varies with congestion and with the chain — the same contract is dramatically cheaper on Base or Optimism than on Ethereum mainnet.
Haven reads gates on all three, so the chain is your decision and cost is a fair basis for making it.
- 03
Issue some before you publish
A gate over a supply of zero excludes everybody, including you. Mint to yourself and to the community first, then test the address above — the inspector will warn you if nothing has been issued.
The gate is the easy part.
With a gate chosen and a threshold set, founding is finished — what remains is publishing. Either release it in stages, with each stage unlocking as your token climbs, or publish it whole, which is the same work for you as for anyone else contributing to a community's archive.
- 01
Or gate the drop itself
If what you are founding is a single release rather than an ongoing archive, the gate can be the release schedule: stages that unlock as your token's market cap crosses rungs you set. The lock screen becomes the promotion — a public progress bar counting down to the next unlock, visible to everyone, openable only by holders past each rung.
- 02
Follow the publisher's path
FIL for Filecoin gas, USDFC for the storage, GLM for gas on the index, and
haven-clito encrypt locally and pin the ciphertext. Your gate address and threshold are parameters to that process, not a separate registration. - 03
Announce itNo public network
Registering your archive as an entity in Arkiv — a transaction paid in GLM — is what makes it findable — it binds the archive to your key, records its piece CIDs, and lets the index attribute the bytes to your community. The protocol requires this layer; it is how any client knows your archive exists.
Arkiv retired its Braga testnet on 12 August 2026 and the next public one is expected September 2026, so there is currently nowhere to write the entity. Your archive would still exist, still be encrypted, still be proven, and still open for anyone holding the gate asset who knows where to look — what waits on the index is discovery.
- Retired endpoint
- https://braga.hoodi.arkiv.network/rpc
- Next public testnet
- September 2026