Asset-bearing outputs
This is the most important concept page on this site after reading the numbers.
An output holding an inscription looks, to Bitcoin, exactly like an output holding 546 satoshis of ordinary change. Nothing in the script, the value, or the address distinguishes them. A wallet that does not know better will happily spend one as fee padding, and the transaction will be perfectly valid.
Two ways an asset is destroyed by a valid transaction
Section titled “Two ways an asset is destroyed by a valid transaction”Spending it as change or fees
Section titled “Spending it as change or fees”A utxo asset lives on a specific satoshi in a specific output. Spend that
output as ordinary change and the asset follows the satoshi wherever the
transaction sends it, which is usually somewhere you did not intend. Use it as
fee padding and the asset goes to the miner.
Core refuses to spend an output that carries an inscription or a rune balance as fees or as padding.
Burning a rune balance with a malformed marker
Section titled “Burning a rune balance with a malformed marker”This one is worse, because no check can see it.
A rune balance is assigned by a small marker output, not by the address holding it. When that marker is malformed the transaction is still perfectly valid to Bitcoin: it confirms normally, and every rune balance it spent is destroyed. No fee check and no node acceptance test can detect this, because nothing about the transaction is invalid.
Core reads that marker on every purchase and refuses to hand you a transaction that would burn a balance.
Unexamined is refused, like known-carrying
Section titled “Unexamined is refused, like known-carrying”The rule that makes the protection actually work:
An output the rune index has not examined is refused on the same footing as one known to hold runes, because not having looked is not the same as having found nothing.
The same applies to the ordinals index: an output it has not examined is treated as unknown rather than as empty.
This is the reading the numbers principle applied where it costs something. A system that treated unexamined as empty would be faster and would occasionally burn an asset.
The complete inventory gate
Section titled “The complete inventory gate”Several protocols go further and require a complete output inventory across all 29 protocols before a mutation is allowed. The registry states this explicitly for TAP, DMT, UNAT, Bitmap, Names, and DROPS: ownership must be proven against the exact protocol state and a complete inventory of every protocol that could be co-located on the same output.
Ordinals states a narrower version of the same idea: every mutation requires one confirmed, unspent, single-inscription output with no co-located Runes, and the Ordinals index and Bitcoin must agree on value, outpoint, and owner.
Atomicals states it as a rejection list: mutations fail closed on mixed collateral, the wrong NFT subtype, a spent outpoint, checkpoint drift, a burn, or an ownership mismatch. A generic NFT listing cannot contain a Realm, Subrealm, fungible token, container, or item subtype.
ARC-20 works in complete colored-sat outputs, and the application never splits a selected colored lot or uses it as ordinary Bitcoin change.
Why an Ordex purchase needs two small outputs
Section titled “Why an Ordex purchase needs two small outputs”A worked example of the same physics.
A public ask is signed so that the seller’s payment output must sit at the same position as the offered output being spent. Satoshis leave a transaction in the order their inputs appear. If the offered output were first, its satoshis would be the first thing the seller’s payment is paid from, so the inscription, its satoshi position, and its postage would go straight back to the seller. The transaction would be perfectly valid and the buyer would receive nothing.
Ordex therefore places two small outputs of yours ahead of the offered one, so the asset lands in an output you own. Those outputs come back to you in the first output of the same transaction, so they are not a cost. A wallet holding no small outputs is told so plainly rather than handed a purchase built from the wrong ones.
What you should do
Section titled “What you should do”- Keep asset-bearing outputs in the address role your wallet reserves for them, and keep ordinary spending separate.
- Use a wallet that understands inscriptions and runes. A generic wallet with coin control off is the usual way an asset is lost.
- Read the inputs and outputs in your own wallet’s prompt, not only in Core’s review screen. The wallet is the final authorization boundary.
- If Core refuses an action citing an unexamined or co-located output, do not route around it in another tool. That refusal is doing its job.