Atomicals
Atomicals is the largest enabled family in Core: four of the nine enabled
marketplace protocols are Atomicals markets, and all four declare 12 of the 13
marketplace actions.
Four markets
Section titled “Four markets”| Market | Trades | Identity required |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-20 | Fungible colored-sat tokens | The authoritative ticker winner. A trade moves the complete colored value |
| Atomicals NFTs | Collectibles | One authoritative compact Atomical id, quantity one |
| Realms | Top-level Realm names | The verified authoritative name winner |
| Subrealms | Names below a parent Realm | The verified authoritative subrealm winner |
All four run on one isolated Atomicals execution service with separate protocol routes and durable state.
A browse result does not by itself mean an asset is listed for sale.
What every mutation rechecks
Section titled “What every mutation rechecks”Each mutation rechecks the exact Bitcoin output, the owner script, the spent state, the single-Atomical inventory, the colored value, and a stable Bitcoin and Atomicals checkpoint.
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. Realm and Subrealm markets additionally require the resolver to return the verified winner at the exact live owner outpoint.
Prepared transactions must assign the selected Atomical to one unburned output, preserve the reviewed seller payout and fees, and pass Bitcoin Core preflight.
Settlement requires at least one confirmation by default, and operators may configure 1 to 100. Listing revisions, funded offers, reservations, broadcast lineage, confirmation, dropped and replaced transactions, and reorg reconciliation are durable and protocol-scoped.
Listing an ARC-20 lot
Section titled “Listing an ARC-20 lot”An ARC-20 balance is held in complete colored-sat outputs.
- Open the token from Portfolio or its ARC-20 market.
- Select one available lot.
- Enter the sale price.
- Review the 1.5% seller service fee and the net proceeds.
- Approve the PSBT in the connected wallet.
Core never splits the selected colored lot and never uses it as ordinary Bitcoin change.
The listing appears only after the signed offer passes ownership, outpoint, ticker, quantity, payout, and signature checks. Refreshing or reconnecting reads the open listing from the market; retrying cannot create a second open listing for the same ARC-20 outpoint. Buying independently applies the buyer service fee and preserves every colored satoshi in the buyer output.
NFT artwork
Section titled “NFT artwork”Atomicals NFT cards show authoritative inline artwork when the unified index publishes a safe media field and a SHA-256 digest. The browser loads that field from Core, not from an indexer or a third-party media origin. Core caps the response at 16 MiB, accepts only a narrow set of image, audio, video, JSON, and plain-text media types, and checks the complete body against its digest before returning it. Invalid or tampered media falls back to the asset name and identifier and is never treated as ownership, listing, or settlement evidence.
An Atomicals digital object may hold several payload files, or none. Where several images are present the card always shows the same one, so a thumbnail does not change between refreshes. Where the index confirms an object carries no image payload, its card shows a neutral placeholder, which keeps a genuinely image-free object visually distinct from artwork that failed to load. Artwork that was briefly unavailable is retried rather than left as a placeholder for the rest of the visit.
Selecting anywhere on an NFT card, including its artwork, opens that asset’s own page, which has its own address and can be linked, opened in a new tab, reloaded, and reached again with Back and Forward.
When the index cannot answer
Section titled “When the index cannot answer”The ARC-20 market, token pages, holder rankings, and ARC-20 portfolio balances all report the data as unavailable and offer a retry. They never substitute sample rows and never show an unreadable balance as zero, so an outage stays distinguishable from a genuinely empty market or wallet.