Inscriptions : Heart of Ordinals

Numbering satoshis is all very well, but how do you create NFTs Digital Artifacts? The whole logic of creating and storing NFTs Digital Artifacts on Bitcoin is based on the concept of inscription.

"Satoshis can be inscribed with arbitrary content, creating digital artifacts unique to Bitcoin."

In practice, to carry out an inscription it is necessary to send the satoshi to be inscribed in a transaction that reveals the content of the on-chain inscription. As a result, the content of the transaction is now linked to the satoshi in question, transforming it into an Digital Artifact.

Subsequently, satoshis that present an inscription can be transferred via a classic Bitcoin transaction. However, in order to send individual satoshis, these transactions must control the order and values of inputs and outputs so that they conform to the ordinal theory.

In practice, entries are stored on-chain in Taproot expense scripts. Indeed, Ordinals were enabled by the deployment of the Taproot update on the Bitcoin network in November 2021. Coupled with SegWit, this increases the size of data that can be stored in a Bitcoin transaction to 4MB.

Due to Taproot's design, Taproot script extensions can only be made from existing Taproot outputs. As a result, entries are made in two steps called transmission and re-transmission.