A physical molecule and a digital record, inseparable by design. Authenticity that cannot be faked because it lives in two worlds at once, and can be integrated into virtually anything: liquids, solids, surfaces, inks, packaging, documents, or objects.
The molecule is a physical marker and a cryptographic key. The blockchain holds the encrypted payload. Neither works alone.
To authenticate a product, you must hold both: the molecule extracted from the sample, and the digital record on-chain. Counterfeit either in isolation and the system rejects it. Counterfeit both at once and you would need to forge chemistry and mathematics simultaneously.
This is what dual-factor means when you take it out of the phone and into the world.
Biotoken is the industrial distillation of a decade of artistic and scientific research by Solimán López into DNA as a medium for memory, value and identity. What began as conceptual art now becomes infrastructure.
Biotoken is built on two independent but interdependent layers. Each carries one half of the proof. Authentication requires both, and the system is engineered so that neither can be derived from the other.
Each molecule is custom-designed for the client. Our proprietary encoding and decoding software maps arbitrary information into a synthetic DNA sequence, which is then protected inside a hydroxyapatite matrix. One molecule, one identity, one object, fully tailored.
The same symmetric key that lives inside the DNA sequence encrypts the object's certificate: provenance, authorship, custom metadata. That encrypted certificate is then published on a public or permissioned blockchain. The payload is public. The key is the molecule itself.
The DNA sequence is the cryptographic key. The record on-chain only opens when both are brought together.
The same mechanism that preserved DNA inside fossil bone for millions of years is the one we engineer in the lab. Nature solved the preservation problem long ago. We translated the solution into industrial chemistry.
Hydroxyapatite is the mineral that forms bone and enamel. Biology has used it for half a billion years to shelter nucleic acids from enzymes, UV, oxidation and heat.
We use it to bury the DNA marker inside a crystal grown around it. The molecule is never exposed to its host.
"DNA can be encapsulated by hydroxyapatite and released when environmental conditions change." Bertran et al., 2016
Biotoken is a design protocol, not a single formulation. For each client and each medium we engineer a custom surface chemistry, hydrophilic or hydrophobic, polar or non-polar, aqueous or organic.
The particle becomes invisible to its host. Dispersion stays stable, sedimentation stops, the DNA core remains intact.
Same skeleton outside as the host. Different chemistry inside. A carrier tailored to whatever world it must live in. Biotoken design principle
Biotoken is a universal authentication layer. The same dual-factor architecture adapts to any object, material or liquid whose origin, authorship or certification must be guaranteed at molecular level.
Biotoken's principles resonate with a broad field of open scientific literature on DNA-mineral hybrid systems. The publications below are cited as context for the general science behind molecular encapsulation and biomineralized preservation. They are not the source of our proprietary architecture.
Since 2019, the molecular-digital architecture behind Biotoken has been tested in four public, peer-reviewed, internationally exhibited works. Each one applied DNA as an active carrier of information: a museum, a smart contract, a manifesto, a constitution. Each one proved a different dimension of the same architecture: encoding, encapsulation, preservation, recovery. Biotoken is the solution that emerged from those years of experimentation.
Founded on a decade of research by Solimán López. Developed by SLStudio.
Cultural heritage preserved in DNA
The world's first museum migrated from a hard drive to synthetic DNA storage. A proof that digital cultural heritage, images, code, documentation, can be preserved in a molecular substrate for geological timescales. The architecture proved: durable encoding and readout of complex digital objects in DNA.
Smart contract dispersed in olive oil
A smart contract encoded into synthetic DNA and dispersed inside olive oil. OLEA introduced the very term biotoken: a hybrid object that is simultaneously a physical liquid, a cryptographic contract, and a biological archive. The architecture proved: DNA can be suspended in a hydrophobic oxygenated liquid and carry active digital logic. The direct ancestor of the industrial Biotoken protocol.
A manifesto encapsulated in Arctic ice
A manifesto encoded into synthetic DNA, encapsulated inside a bio-printed collagen ear and buried in the permafrost of Svalbard. The architecture proved: synthetic DNA survives extreme cold, radiation and time when shielded by a biocompatible matrix, the exact preservation question that Biotoken answers with hydroxyapatite at industrial scale.
A constitution recovered from a drop of ink
The entire German Grundgesetz encoded into synthetic DNA, silica-encapsulated, processed into printing ink by Faber-Castell and printed in the 2024 Pentecost edition of Süddeutsche Zeitung. The full 37 kB digital text was recovered from a single dot of printed ink. The architecture proved: mineral-encapsulated DNA survives industrial ink processing, printing, and field conditions, and can be recovered intact from minute sample quantities, the exact detection scenario Biotoken requires at ppb concentrations in fuel.
Whatever you need to authenticate, a work of art, a batch of material, a certified product, a packaging or a document, we can design a dual-factor solution with you.