The Inscriptions

Last updated 1 month ago

The Inscriptions

Inscription as protocol as art

Seeds are ordinal inscriptions that combine recursion, parent-child, re-inscription, and delegation to produce an inventive digital artifact. They are both simple and complex, creative and technical, art and protocol.

This is what happens under the hood:

The seed inscription fetches the loader script.
If appropriate for the context, the editor, metadata utilities, and garden explorer are loaded.

Ready to set your seed inscription?

An onchain generative primitive

One of the core concepts embedded in SEEDS is a simple protocol for formatting and handling seed number inscriptions.

More than just updating the seed inscription's appearance, these seed numbers can be used to initialize onchain and offchain computation, allowing them to influence any code that integrates them.

The collection uses recursion, parent-child, re-inscription, and delegation features of the Ordinals protocol to implement an elegant solution that can be used and built-upon beyond the SEEDS collection.

Understanding incarnation

Changing a seed inscription's seed number creates a new, unique onchain entity—a child inscription called an "incarnation".

Incarnation inscriptions are a natural byproduct of inscribing a new seed number.

They contain only the new seed number in their content field, cannot be changed, and are not themselves part of the SEEDS collection proper.

However, incarnations are the onchain embodiment of the seed number. Owning the incarnation may be what some value most.

Because the parent-child relationship between seeds and their incarnations are recorded onchain, deeper dimensions of relation can take form over time.

Keep them, trade them, use them to form networks—you decide.

Incarnating a seed

The TL;DR: you create an incarnation by inscribing a child with a valid seed number as its content.

If you want to know about the details of the process, read on...

Making the most of incarnations

Additional features of the Ordinals protocol are used to enhance these secondary artifacts.

Incarnations can be inscribed as re-inscriptions that are forever bound to their parent seed—or—they can be inscribed as stand-alone child inscriptions that can be transferred independently, like a print.

🌱 If an incarnation is inscribed as a re-inscription, it is bound to the original seed inscription and cannot be transferred independently.

👶 If an incarnation is inscribed as a stand-alone child inscription, it can be freely traded or transferred independently of its parent seed inscription.

Incarnations can delegate their content to their parent seed, giving them their own visual representation as an ordinal. Incarnations can be visually distinguished from actual seed inscriptions by their lack of a border frame.

It is recommended to inscribe incarnations with delegation so that they can be easily identified and managed in explorers and apps.

Built for interaction

Seed inscriptions are code-based artworks built using HTML, SVG, CSS, and JavaScript, as well as Bitcoin and the Ordinals protocol, to provide a deep and high-quality experience.

The SEEDS artwork is adaptive and responsive, adjusting how it displays the artwork based on its context.

When loaded into a document or container with sufficient space, the inscription will load the editor and metadata viewer (min 540x540px) modules, as well as the collection explorer (min 650x540px).

Seeds contain multitudes

Built into every seed inscription is a fully-featured editor UI. Users can easily generate or construct seed numbers directly from the SEEDS artwork itself.

You can open the editor UI by double-clicking the artwork, pressing the E key or clicking the Editor Button in the bottom left corner.

Open the garden map by pressing the G key or by clicking the Garden Button in the bottom right corner.

Using the Garden Map UI, you can click to navigate to any seed in the collection and see everything about them, or enter a SEED ID manually. You can also navigate between seeds using the Up Arrow and Down Arrow keys. If a seed inscription is blank, it will be skipped over.

Use what you've got

If the seed's container is large enough (min 1600px wide with a min 2:1 aspect ratio) then the Editor and Garden Map can both be revealed at the same time.

Looking deeper into things

Hovering over a seed reveals the Info Button and the Play Button.

The Play Button (or Spacebar) starts the spin animation, and the Info Button (or the I key) reveals the onchain and computed metadata for the current seed.

From this interface, users can save the seed artwork as a PNG or SVG, as well as copy its seed number.

Clicking on the computed metadata will tab through multiple attributes for the seed that are derived from its seed number.

This will reveal everything from a seed number's numerical and mathematical properties, to its relative frequency, and its various astrological and esoteric associations.

Switching things up

Users can toggle a seed between Light and Dark mode using the W key.

Users can also display seeds in Square (U key) and Fullscreen (F key) formats.

Downloading your seed

SEEDS inscriptions can produce PNG and standalone SVG files. The generated files are high-resolution and suitable for large-scale display in digital or print.

Simply open the Metadata UI (I key) and click the "PNG" or "SVG" buttons.