Volume 1, Issue 11
Laboratory
Cover story

Five hundred microbes, grown in glass

Luoms, ERC-721 on Ethereum. Mint opens 10 November 2026.

10 µm
Fig. 1. Nine Luoms through one full 12-second loop. The loop closes on itself, so the motion never jumps.

Abstract

A Luom is a microbe made of glass and light. Each one is a small program that reads its number as a seed and grows a body from it: a form, a surface, shells, a stain and a light. The same number always grows the same Luom. There are five hundred, and they mint once.

Mint
10 November 2026, 12:00 to 13:00 UTC
Price
0.002 ETH
Supply
500
Chain
Ethereum, ERC-721
Where
OpenSea
Open the drop on OpenSea Browse all 500 live

How a Luom grows

Nothing in this colony is stored as a picture. Each Luom is drawn in real time with three.js, in the browser of whoever is looking at it. The number picks the body, then the stain tints the glass and the light decides how it glows.

Then the Luom moves. It sways side to side, breathes, and pulses inside, all on one 12-second loop. Every motion is a whole number of turns in that time, so the last frame meets the first.

The image you see on OpenSea is a still from the same program, framed so no spine is cut off. Open a Luom on OpenSea and the live version runs right there.

The stains take their names from real lab dyes: Nile Blue, Malachite, Eosin, Safranin, Congo Red and Methylene. A few stains exist only here, like Aurora, Plasma and Void.

The ten forms

  1. Luom 18, Staphylo formStaphylo#18, Aurora
  2. Luom 11, Strepto formStrepto#11, Aurora
  3. Luom 350, Bacilli formBacilli#350, Iridescent
  4. Luom 230, Coccus formCoccus#230, Congo Red
  5. Luom 140, Morula formMorula#140, Nile Blue
  6. Luom 13, Acanthar formAcanthar#13, Eosin
  7. Luom 134, Nassella formNassella#134, Nile Blue
  8. Luom 44, Lattice formLattice#44, Eosin
  9. Luom 448, Discus formDiscus#448, Gold
  10. Luom 174, Coral formCoral#174, Safranin
Fig. 2. One Mythic Luom of each form, with its stain.

Counts

Table 1. Luoms by form, out of 500.
FormCount
Morula68
Coccus63
Bacilli60
Staphylo59
Acanthar58
Nassella57
Strepto45
Lattice41
Coral30
Discus19
Table 2. Luoms by stain, out of 500.
StainCount
Nile Blue73
Malachite66
Eosin65
Safranin59
Congo Red57
Methylene52
Fuchsia42
Gold23
Aurora21
Plasma18
Iridescent12
Void12
Table 3. Luoms by tier.
TierCount
Common81
Uncommon179
Rare136
Epic60
Mythic44
Table 4. Luoms by light.
LightCount
Studio174
Dawn126
Boreal98
Duo74
Eclipse28

Related

Bioms: a colony that only gets smaller Plods: four thousand microbes that walk