Ordex
Ordex is the public-ask order book at /ordex, with an orders desk at
/ordex/orders. Every build ships it and it leads the Trade market picker. An
operator holds one deliberate kill switch: when it is used, the market and the
desk stay where they are and say they were switched off.
Browse by protocol family
Section titled “Browse by protocol family”A two-level hierarchy: pick a family, then narrow to a subprotocol inside it.
| Family | Subprotocols |
|---|---|
| Bitcoin / Generic | Bitcoin PSBT |
| Ordinals | Ordinals, Bitmap, BRC-20, TAP, DMT, UNAT, Names |
| OP_RETURN | OP Inscriptions, OP-20, OP Names |
| OP_DROP | Taproot OP_DROP |
| Atomicals | ARC-20 |
| Runes | Runes |
| Tokens / Metaprotocols | Alkanes, Mezcal, DUST20 |
Every family above settles as a Bitcoin transaction.
What is deliberately absent
Section titled “What is deliberately absent”Dogecoin, Stamps, SRC-20, and Counterparty assets are missing on purpose. Ordex builds, verifies, and settles Bitcoin PSBTs, and it has no builder, verifier, or source adapter for those protocols. Listing them would put a creation flow in front of you that ends in a builder that cannot run, and it would let a plain Bitcoin PSBT carry a label nothing had checked. They return when a real adapter exists.
The family list is read from the live Ordex catalog, so a protocol Ordex adds or retires is reflected without a separate update.
Buying, in four named steps
Section titled “Buying, in four named steps”- Review this purchase. Ordex rechecks the listing against Bitcoin Core and the ordinals index, reads the value of the outputs your wallet would spend from the node itself, and composes the buyer half. You are shown the seller’s proceeds, the Ordex fee, the creator royalty, the network fee and the rate it was priced at, the change coming back to you, the total you pay, and the exact address the asset arrives at. Nothing has been signed.
- Approve in my wallet. Your wallet signs your own inputs only. The seller’s half arrived already signed and is never touched.
- The node’s own verdict. The signed transaction goes back to Ordex, which binds it to the order again, proves the asset movement, checks that the transaction would not destroy a rune balance, and asks Bitcoin Core whether it would accept it. Nothing has been sent yet.
- Send this transaction. Only this step reaches the network, and only the exact bytes the node checked are sent.
Ordex never receives a private key or a seed phrase, never contributes funds, and never broadcasts on its own initiative.
Why a purchase needs two small outputs
Section titled “Why a purchase needs two small outputs”A public ask is signed so 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. They come back to you in the first output of the same transaction, so they are not a cost.
Why a purchase can be refused over runes
Section titled “Why a purchase can be refused over runes”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 see this.
Ordex reads that marker on every purchase and refuses to hand you a transaction that would burn a balance. 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.
Ordex also refuses to spend an inscription-bearing or rune-bearing output as fees or padding.
What Ordex proves, per family
Section titled “What Ordex proves, per family”Each listing states its own scope rather than leaving you to assume it.
| Scope | Families | What Ordex proves |
|---|---|---|
| Inscription position | Ordinals, Bitmap, Names, OP Inscriptions, OP Names, Taproot OP_DROP | Where the inscription sits right now, read from the ordinals index |
| Inscription position only | BRC-20, TAP, DMT, UNAT, OP-20, Mezcal, DUST20 | Where the inscription sits. Token balances and transfer state are not read |
| Output is unspent | Bitcoin PSBT, ARC-20, Runes, Alkanes | That the exact output is unspent and the ask is built around it. Balances carried by the output are not read |
A scope that stops short of the protocol balance is stated plainly on the listing. Read those balances in a wallet you trust before you sign.
Market states
Section titled “Market states”| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Loading | The request is still in flight |
| No matching artifacts | Ordex answered and has no order for this selection. A confirmed empty result |
| Ordex inventory is unavailable | The request failed. The number of orders is unknown, and it is never shown as zero |
| Switched off by an operator | Ordex is deliberately paused. The market and desk stay in place and say so |
| Degraded | Ordex is running, but a Bitcoin Core or ordinals reader is unavailable. Existing orders stay listed; new listings cannot be verified until the reader returns |
Offers, activity, and collections
Section titled “Offers, activity, and collections”Offers are the live bid side of the same order book. Activity is different: an append-only record of listing lifecycle changes such as created, cancelled, filled, expired, or found spent. The market never turns a listing’s current state into a made-up historical event.
Collection labels come from published Ordinals collection membership. Where no published collection contains an inscription, the inscription keeps its own identity rather than being grouped into a shared fallback collection.
Completing in another wallet
Section titled “Completing in another wallet”The raw signed order is available behind a disclosure, for a wallet Ordex cannot drive. Building, funding, and sending it is then entirely yours, including placing the asset in an output you own. Read asset-bearing outputs before using it.
First-claimer-wins
Section titled “First-claimer-wins”A public ask remains first-claimer-wins. Ordex never labels one reserved. Refresh an order and review every transaction detail in a wallet you trust immediately before settling.