Foundation NFT was an Ethereum marketplace for digital art that launched in early 2021 and has since shut down. This guide explains Foundation's invite system and its reserve auctions, and shows how to build a curated auction marketplace for artists with the same design.
Foundation's website at foundation.app no longer resolved when this page was checked in October 2026. Foundation's smart contracts remain public in the fnd-protocol repository on GitHub, and the auction rules below come from that code.
How the Foundation NFT marketplace worked
Foundation did not let anyone mint at launch. Artists joined through invites: existing artists received invites to pass on, and the community could upvote applicants. The invite system gave Foundation curation without a central jury, and early collectors trusted that the work was original.
Foundation later removed the invite requirement, so any creator could join. The product grew from one-off auctions into editions, drops and curated exhibitions. Strict curation built Foundation's reputation early, but it also limited how many artists could join.
The reserve auction
The reserve auction was Foundation's best-known mechanic. The fnd-protocol contracts define it in four steps:
- The artist lists a piece with a reserve price.
- The auction waits until someone bids at or above the reserve, and that first bid starts a 24-hour countdown.
- A bid in the final 15 minutes resets the time left to 15 minutes, so bidders cannot win by bidding in the last second.
- When the countdown ends, the winner settles the auction and receives the NFT.
The reserve auction is a type of English auction, where the price rises with each bid. The countdown gives collectors a reason to share the auction and return to it. The main alternative is a Dutch auction, where the price falls over time and which suits editions of many identical items. The auction website development guide compares auction formats.
Fees and royalties
The Foundation market contract pays creators a 10% royalty on secondary sales, which a creator can split among up to five recipients. The contract can also pay a 1% fee to a "buy referrer", a site or app that brought the buyer. The Foundation protocol fee is a setting chosen when the contract is deployed, not a fixed number in the code.
Royalties on Foundation applied to sales on Foundation's own contracts. Like every marketplace, Foundation could not make other venues pay them, because the token standard EIP-2981 only reports a royalty rate.
Creator-owned contracts
Foundation moved from one shared contract to separate collection contracts for each artist. A separate contract keeps an artist's work identifiable and lets the artist move it if a platform changes or closes.
How to build a Foundation clone
Contracts
- Collection factory. The factory deploys a minimal proxy ERC-721 contract for each artist, with EIP-2981 royalty data.
- Auction house. The auction contract holds the NFT in escrow, keeps the highest bid, refunds outbid bidders and enforces the timer and the extension rule.
- Buy-now prices and offers for pieces that do not go to auction.
- Payment splitter for collaborations, which divides the proceeds between artists on-chain.
A refund to the previous bidder fails if that bidder is a contract that rejects ETH, and a malicious bidder could use that failure to block the auction. Foundation's contracts solve this with a fallback: if a refund fails, the contract stores the amount for the bidder to withdraw later.
Curation layer
Choose how artists join: invites, an application that curators review, or open sign-up with curated featuring. Every option needs tools for identity checks and plagiarism detection, because art marketplaces attract copied work quickly.
Storage
Store media and metadata on IPFS or Arweave, pin the files with your own service, and give artists the content hashes, because collectors need the art to stay online if your company closes.
What to copy from Foundation and what to change
- Copy the reserve auction with a time extension. The rules are short, and every bidder gets the same last chance to respond.
- Copy artist-owned contracts.
- Change the curation model as the marketplace grows, and plan the move from invite-only to open sign-up with featured curation.
- Change the assumption that royalties are guaranteed. If royalties are central to your pitch, enforce them in the token contract, for example with ERC-721C.
- Add cheaper chains. Ethereum mainnet gas makes low-priced work hard to sell, so many art platforms now support Layer 2 networks such as Base.
The SuperRare guide covers a more exclusive one-of-one model, and the NFT art marketplace guide covers the art market in general.
Effort
A curated single-chain auction marketplace indexes only the works minted on it, so it is one of the smaller NFT builds. A team of two or three engineers and a designer can reach an audited launch in about three to four months. That figure is an estimate from the contract list above, not a quote, and the auction contract needs the most testing.
Frequently asked questions
Is Foundation NFT still running?
No. Foundation has shut down, and foundation.app did not resolve in October 2026. NFTs minted on Foundation stay on Ethereum in their owners' wallets, and other marketplaces can still list them. The Foundation contracts stay public on GitHub.
Why use a reserve auction instead of a fixed price?
A one-of-one work by an artist with no sales history has no known price, and an auction sets the price and makes the sale a public event. Fixed prices suit editions and artists with steady demand.
Should a new art marketplace be invite-only?
Invites help build a reputation for quality early, but they limit growth. Foundation started with invites and later opened sign-up to all creators.
Which chain suits an artist marketplace?
Ethereum mainnet carries prestige for high-value art, while Layer 2 networks such as Base make low-priced work affordable to sell. Many teams add a second chain once the first is stable.
How do I handle outbid refunds safely?
Try the refund first, and if the transfer fails, record the amount as a balance the bidder can withdraw later. A failed refund must never cancel the new bid.