Quick Understanding of Recursive Inscriptions: The Lego Blocks of Ordinals

In the recent bearish market sentiment, the Bitcoin protocol Ordinals has brought attention to a hot update - the launch of Recursive inscriptions. It can use special syntax to reference other inscriptions, making the creation of inscriptions smaller in size and lower in cost. So what exactly are recursive inscriptions? This article takes you through the most noteworthy innovations of recursive inscriptions.

What are Ordinals Recursive Inscriptions

On June 12th, the Bitcoin protocol Ordinals' new chief maintainer Raph merged the "Recursive inscriptions #2167" proposed by Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor into the Ordinals code on Github. Subsequently, one of the anonymous developers of Ordinals, Leonidas.og, introduced and explained the content known as "recursive inscriptions."

Recursive inscriptions refer to a way of inscribing on the blockchain, which can break the awkward situation in the previous way of inscribing, where each inscription is independent and not related. Through its self-referential nature, it opens up the possibility of free combination. In short, recursive inscriptions are inscriptions that request the content of other inscriptions.

Specific Content and Innovations of Recursive Inscriptions

According to developer Leonidas.og's interpretation, inscriptions can now use special "/-/content/:inscription_id" syntax to request the content of other inscriptions, which directly allows users to create inscriptions on the Bitcoin chain with less capacity, i.e., lower cost fees.

• In the past: To create inscriptions for PFP collections, images needed to be uploaded, and users downloaded the images on the chain. As the image quality improved, becoming more detailed and high-definition, the corresponding image memory and space occupied also increased, resulting in higher costs.

• Now: The special id syntax used by recursive inscriptions essentially uses text code to find images. Inscriptions for PFP collections can be created by uploading the corresponding features of the image, including patterns (monkeys), colors (green background), actions (raising hands), and other elements. Then, the found corresponding elements on the chain are combined and assembled, without the need for uploading and downloading images.

• Direct advantages: This way of creating inscriptions is because of calling text code, so the size is very small, not only greatly reducing the cost fees, but also allowing the size of the inscriptions to exceed the 4MB limit of the Bitcoin block.

• Expansion potential: The flexibility, combination, and low-cost advantages of recursive inscriptions bring unlimited new possibilities to inscriptions, allowing complex images, videos, 3D games, and other forms of content to be inscribed on the chain (new types of inscriptions "JS" and "CSS" have also been added).

• OnChainMonkey: The team has already inscribed two completely on-chain npm packages on the Bitcoin chain, and then used recursion to call these packages from the inscriptions of the upcoming Dimensions collection, creating beautiful 3D artworks in less than 1 KB in size. OnChainMonkey will release the OCM Dimensions project of recursive inscriptions on June 15th, and these package resources will be public resources, just like joining a material library, and anyone can use recursive inscriptions to reference them.

• Ord.io: The Bitcoin inscription exploration and discovery platform Ord.io officially supports the creation and display of recursive inscriptions as of June 12th. The official Twitter also surprised that someone has created the dynamic artwork using recursion in just 466 bytes.

Infinite Possibilities of the Bitcoin Chain

Due to the characteristics of recursive inscriptions, it becomes possible to build an internal internet. Here, not only can each file request data from other files on the Bitcoin chain, but many repositories will be able to access each other, which also means that more valuable things can be uploaded to the Bitcoin chain.

Founder Casey Rodarmor has answered community members' questions, stating that new types of inscriptions related to web construction, "JavaScript" and "CSS," have been added. This means that soon we will be able to see dynamic websites that exist on decentralized networks and never disappear;

There are also more possibilities:

• Secondary creation of inscriptions: Due to the combinable and possibly divisible nature of recursive inscriptions, as well as the increasingly rich public material resources, it will definitely bring more creative stimulation to inscription creation.

• Decentralization of GitHub: Some in the community believe that the combinable and possibly divisible nature can be used to move code data from GitHub to the Bitcoin chain, achieving complete decentralization.

• NFT combination and fragmentation: This is undoubtedly the most anticipated content. If recursive inscriptions can achieve divisible inscriptions, NFTs will also achieve free combination and disassembly. This technology can also be expected to be applied on applications other than the Bitcoin chain, innovating more NFT gameplay.

Conclusion

The recursive inscriptions code has only been merged for a few days, and the appearance of recursive inscriptions also marks a further increase in the programmability of the Ordinals protocol at the application level, undoubtedly an important moment on the Bitcoin chain. From the richness of content, the reduction of cost fees, to the unlimited combination possibilities in the future, we are looking forward to the application and expansion of recursive inscriptions. However, it is important to note that new things inevitably come with uncertainties and unknown risks, and bugs in the code may also occur. While being optimistic and trying, please also manage the risks carefully and invest cautiously.

Ordinals Github Code:

https://github.com/ordinals/ord/pull/2167#issuecomment-1586342841

Leonidas.og Twitter:

https://twitter.com/LeonidasNFT/status/1668098460766052353

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