What is the Ordinals Protocol
Ordinals is an open-source experimental project developed on GitHub. The project includes a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) describing the ordinal scheme, an index that communicates with Bitcoin Core nodes to track all ordinal positions, a wallet allowing for ordinal-aware transactions, a block explorer for interactive blockchain exploration, and functionality for minting ordinal NFTs.
Technical Specifications:
Ordinal numbers assigned to sats are represented in various ways, including:
Integer Notation: 2099994106992659 — Sequential numbers arranged by mining order, with the maximum value of 2,100T due to Bitcoin's total supply being 21,000,000 and 1 BTC equating to 100,000,000 sats.
Decimal Notation: 3891094.16797 — The first number represents the height of the Bitcoin block where the sat was mined, and the second number represents the sat's order (offset) within that block.
Degree Symbol: 3°111094′214″16797‴ — The last number is the order in which the sat was mined in the block, followed by the block height (in degrees).
Percentile Symbol: 99.99971949060254% — A representation of the sat's percentage in the total Bitcoin supply.
Name: satoshi — A method of representing ordinals using the letters "az."
Interestingly, the creator of the Ordinals Theory has assigned a rarity to each sat based on the ordinal it has been assigned:
Common: Every sat except the first one seated in each block.
Uncommon: The first sat seated in every block (approximately every 10 minutes).
Rare: The first sat seated after difficulty adjustment (approximately every two weeks).
Epic: The first sat seated after a halving event (approximately every 4 years).
Legendary: The first sat seated after the coincidence of difficulty adjustment and halving events (approximately every 24 years).
Mythical: The first sat in the Bitcoin genesis block (only one exists).
The Ordinals protocol runs on the core full nodes of the Bitcoin network. Users can bind arbitrary data such as text, images, and videos to individual "sats" using the Ordinals protocol, adding them to Bitcoin transactions to create inscriptions. Based on the Ordinals system, these "sats" can be tracked. Due to their unique, immutable, and traceable nature, Bitcoin NFTs have emerged from these inscriptions. The Ordinals protocol operates without relying on external side chains or tokens and can be used without making any changes to the Bitcoin network.
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