Historical retrospective · NFTs

Ordinals inscriptions brought data-bearing satoshis into Bitcoin debate

The Ordinals system assigns satoshi-level ordering and allows arbitrary witness data to be associated with individual satoshis as inscriptions.

Event / milestone year: 2023First published

The technique used existing Bitcoin transaction structures, sparking a debate about block-space use, fee markets and what counts as appropriate network activity.

Ordinals made Bitcoin’s block-space policy a mainstream cultural and technical discussion again.

An inscription does not change Bitcoin’s base consensus rules, but its use can affect fees and node resource considerations.

Primary source

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Ordinals documentation ↗