Ordinals, a genius idea born out of nowhere. In February 2023, Ordinals was created by Casey and laid the first inscription. In just over 2 months, the serial number has approached 2 million, and various new gameplay methods such as domain names and BRC20 have been developed.
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What are Ordinals?
We know that there are 21 million Bitcoins in total, and one can be divided into 100 million Satoshis (sat), so 21 million Bitcoins can be divided into 2100 trillion Satoshis. Originally, Bitcoin is homogeneous, that is to say, the Bitcoin in my wallet is no different from your Bitcoin, but now I come up with an idea - what if every satoshi is numbered? Isn't everything different?
The original meaning of the word Ordinals is "ordinal number". What the Ordinals protocol does is to number each Satoshi starting from 0, making each Satoshi unique.
Since information can be written in the Bitcoin block, the numbered sat will naturally become an NFT. As long as you write any form of information such as text, pictures, audio, video, etc., it becomes a piece of art. Moreover, this piece of art is eternal and cannot be tampered with. As long as Bitcoin does not disappear, it will not disappear.
The sat after the information is written is still a sat of Bitcoin, which is equivalent to engraving on a gold brick. Its original value has not changed at all, and now it has the artistic value of engraving. To put it simply, you can think of Bitcoin NFT as a tattooed sat.
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How to make an inscription?
In the Ethereum ecosystem, the word we use when making NFT is "mint", which means "casting". In the Bitcoin ecosystem, when making NFT, there is also a special word called "inscribe", which means "inscribe". Something called an "inscription." Whenever people in the circle talk about making NFT, they will say "make an inscription", for example, "What to make today?", which is asking what NFT to make today. Of course, you have to say mint habitually, that’s fine, it means the same thing.
So how to make an inscription?
You need to use three things - Bitcoin, wallet, and proxy trading platform.
Needless to say, in Bitcoin, writing information into a block requires miners to package it for you, and naturally you have to pay miners a fee. This fee is charged based on the number of bytes of information. The larger the file, the higher the cost of inscription.
Then there's the wallet.
Currently, the wallets used in the Bitcoin ecosystem include Hiro, Xverse, Unisat, OrdinalsWallet, Sparrow, etc.
We generally use the chrome browser plug-in versions of these wallets.
Since Unisat is very popular now, let’s take the Unisat wallet as a demonstration.
1. Search for "Unisat" in the Chrome browser app store, then download and install it.
2. After installation, the plug-in wallet will go to the toolbar in the upper right corner of your browser, as shown below
3. Click on the small wallet icon and follow the instructions to create a new wallet. Pay attention to two things. First, the password requires three elements: uppercase + lowercase + special characters. Second, remember to save the mnemonic phrase. What needs to be noted is that there is a step that requires you to choose the address format. The receiving address of the Ordinals inscription must be a Taproot format address, starting with bc1p. Please select this address, as shown below.
https://unisat.io/, the first step is to select the Inscribe option, the second step is to drag the files you want to mint (such as pictures, documents, etc.) directly into the box, the third step is to fill in the bc1p of your own wallet. Address to receive inscriptions to be minted. As shown below
Here we will focus on the second step
Unisat currently has 5 content options set up, namely "Files, .sats, Text, brc-20, .unisat".
Among them, Files is an all-purpose option. Files of all formats can be directly dragged into this option for engraving. Let's do an experiment.
First, create a TXT file (Notepad) on the computer desktop and name it whatever you want, for example, name it "1", as shown below
Then, write the content you want to write in the TXT file. For example, if we want to engrave a domain name inscription of "3735.unisat", then write 3735.unisat, as shown below
After writing, save. What needs to be noted here is that please do not hit enter or space arbitrarily in the file. TXT Notepad will default to your carriage return being one byte. The total number of 3537.unisat is 11 bytes. If the number of bytes is incorrect, it may be considered as invalid inscription. Right-click the file icon and check to see if it is 11 bytes, as shown below
OK, once confirmed, you can upload the written file, or drag it directly into the "Files" box of unisat you just saw, and it will become as shown below.
It will prompt you to select a network fee. This fee is paid to the miners and is charged by bytes. If you give more, the miners will actively pack. If the fee is too low, the miners will not want to pay attention to you, and your inscription may not be minted for two days. come out. Click "Custom" on the far right, which is an option to customize the network fee. You can set the amount you want. So how much should you give?
You can open https://mempool.space/ to view the real-time status of the blocks in the pool, for example now:
The 6 blue blocks on the right are the network fee (gas) status of the blocks that have been packaged and confirmed. The 6 yellow blocks on the left are the network fee status of the blocks waiting to be packaged. The first yellow block shows that the minimum fee is 11 Satoshi/byte. , so the network fee you give must be no less than 11 before it can be packaged and confirmed for the first time in the next block to be produced. Therefore, sometimes, in order to grab certain inscriptions, you will fight for gas. That is, the network fee you gave is too low. Although you inscribed it first, the block was not packaged for you. Although I waited for you 10 minutes later, Engraved, but my network fee is high and will be packaged and confirmed before you.
Okay, let’s get down to business, let’s continue engraving and select the gas fee. For example, after 12, we can see your detailed expenses in this engraving. The 546 sats in the first line is the output value. You don’t need to know what it means. You just need to know that if it is lower than this number, your transaction will easily be judged as dust by the miners and will not be packaged. Click "Customize'" at the back to adjust this number. It is recommended that the text should not be lower than 546 and the picture should not be lower than 1000. 1999 sats is the service fee charged by the Unisat platform, and 107 sats is the additional fee charged by Unisat based on the file size. There is also a The item shows 5% off, what is this? In fact, it is a domain name product launched by the Unisat platform, which is .unisat. If you use the unisat wallet address with the .unisat domain name to cast inscriptions, you can enjoy a discount. One domain name is reduced by 1%, and the maximum accumulation is 5, which is 5%. I have more than 5 addresses, so there is also a 5% discount.
After confirming that it is correct, click "Submit & Pay invoice" to enter the last step - payment, as shown below
You can choose unisat wallet payment or choose QR code exchange transfer
At this point, the inscription of a domain name has been completed.
Ordinals market classification
Ordinals inscriptions come in five forms: pictures, texts, audios, videos, and games. Since the Bitcoin block size is only 4M, and inscriptions are charged by bytes, audio and video are destined to be unsuitable for making inscriptions, and cannot be speculated on. There are people making games, but they are also limited by the block size and are destined to only make small pixel-level games. Currently, only ordz is making games.
Then the entire market is roughly divided into two types: pictures and text, each accounting for half of the country.
People who have played with Ethereum NFT are familiar with the picture. The gameplay of this kind of NFT is simple. If you are lucky enough to buy a blue chip, it is the king. Needless to say, everyone is familiar with it. Here we mainly introduce the text.
Text is divided into three categories - plain text, domain name, BRC20
Before introducing it, we must emphasize an important principle of the Ordinals protocol: first is first, first is first.
What's the meaning? They are texts with the same content, only the first one is recognized.
Since Ordinals are open and free, anyone can engrave any content. If many people engrave the same content, such as the number "1000", then the number inscription has no value, so we must establish the principle of "first is first". At present, this principle has reached consensus.
In March this year, Twitter user domodata proposed a token agreement based on Ordinals. It is currently only a ledger. However, crazy Ordinals players are very enthusiastic about playing BRC20, coupled with Unisat’s various support for BRC20, resulting in the rise of BRC20 inscription tokens. The over-the-counter price has been rising, and the first token Ordi deployed by Domo has exceeded 1000u/ticket (the full node cost is only 0.5u), a surge of 2000 times.
Related websites:
Ordinals official website
https://ordinals.com/
BRC-20 protocol
https://domo-2.gitbook.io/brc-20-experiment/
Bitcoin block real-time query
https://mempool.space/
data analysis
https://dune.com/domo
https://dune.com/dgtl_assets/bitcoin-ordinals-analysis
Verify the authenticity of the inscription
https://ord.tools/
Domain name inscription query
https://vip.idclub.xyz/
BTC Inscription Browser
https://www.ordscan.xyz/
wallet
https://www.xverse.app/
https://ordinalswallet.com/
https://unisat.io/download
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