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Inscribe docs

Your first inscription

Who this is for. Anyone who has never inscribed anything. No prior Ordinals knowledge is assumed.

Goal. One inscription on Bitcoin mainnet, held at an address you control, that you can verify independently.

Before you start

Section titled “Before you start”
RequirementDetail
Chain and networkBitcoin mainnet. Real money
ProtocolOrdinals. Released, ungated, covered by the release health contract
WalletOne of Universe, UniSat, Xverse, OKX, Wizz
FundsSpendable bitcoin at your payment address. Budget a few thousand satoshis plus the network fee
TimeA few minutes to sign, then up to an hour or so for confirmation at a normal fee rate
Reversible?No. Once you sign, the fee is spent whatever the outcome

Read what a transaction costs first if you have not. You will be shown a total before you sign, and it helps to know what the three lines mean.

Safety considerations

Section titled “Safety considerations”
  • Fund from an address holding only bitcoin where you can. If the payment address also holds inscriptions or token balances, your wallet picks which outputs to spend, and Inscribe cannot override that choice. It will warn you before opening the wallet.
  • Check the content preview. What the preview shows is what gets written. There is no edit afterwards.
  • Do not pay twice. If a payment seems not to register, go to recovery routes rather than sending again.

Steps

Section titled “Steps”

  1. Open the Inscribe workspace.

    Go to inscribe.bitcoinuniverse.io and open Inscribe from the sidebar, or go straight to /inscribe. The command palette, Ctrl + K (Cmd + K on macOS), reaches it by name.

    The workspace opens on the Text sub-tab. The other sub-tabs are Files, Names, Parent/Child, Delegate, Gallery, Stamps and Data Lab.

  2. Connect a wallet.

    Click Connect and pick your wallet. Your wallet asks for permission to share your addresses; approve it. This is a read permission, not a spending one.

    Expected wallet screen: a connection prompt naming the site and listing the accounts it will share. No amount appears, because nothing is being spent yet.

    Once connected, Inscribe holds two addresses from your wallet: a payment address for spendable bitcoin and an Ordinals address for what you own. If your wallet exposes only one address, that one does both jobs.

  3. Choose what to inscribe.

    For text: type or paste into the box on the Text tab. One line is fine.

    For a file: switch to Files and drop a file in, or pick one. Accepted types are JPG, JPEG, PNG, WEBP, GIF, SVG, TXT, HTML, JSON, MP3 and MP4. The maximum is 4 MB, and the file’s extension has to match its actual type or it is rejected.

    Larger files cost more, because the network fee is the fee rate times the size of the transaction. Start small.

  4. Check the preview.

    The preview shows exactly what will be written to the chain. Read it now. After you sign, this is what exists.

  5. Set the fee rate and the output size.

    Pick a fee tier. Normal is selected for you and is marked Recommended; it targets the blocks mined over roughly the next half hour. Fast targets the next block. Custom takes any rate you type.

    If Normal and Fast show the same rate, that is not a bug: blocks have room, and the two tiers are the same purchase. The app says so on both tiers.

    Leave the inscription output at 546 sats unless you have a reason not to. It is not a fee: it is the satoshi your inscription will sit on, and you keep it.

  6. Read the confirmation screen.

    This is the last point at which the choice is still yours. It shows:

    LineWhat it is
    Operation TypeWhat you are about to do
    Network Fee RateThe rate you picked
    Network Gas FeeRate times transaction size, paid to miners
    Service FeeA flat 1,500 sats
    Mint UTXO ValueThe 546 sats your inscription sits on, which stays yours
    Total CostThe amount your wallet will be asked to spend

    It also names the receiving address. Check it is yours.

    If the address you are paying from holds assets, a warning appears here listing them. It does not block you. Read asset safety if you see it.

  7. Confirm and pay.

    Press CONFIRM & PAY. Inscribe creates the order and asks your wallet to send the total to a one-time commit address it generated for this order alone.

    Expected wallet screen: a normal send. One recipient, which is the commit address; the amount, which is the total from the previous step; and the fee rate you chose. Compare the amount against the Total Cost you just read. If it does not match, reject it.

    This is your only signature. The second transaction, the one that actually writes your content, is signed by the order’s own key rather than by you.

  8. Wait.

    You land on the order status page. What happens next needs nothing from you:

    • Universe checks the commit address every ten seconds. An unconfirmed payment is enough; it does not wait for a confirmation.
    • It builds and broadcasts the reveal transaction, which carries your content.
    • A miner confirms the reveal.
    • The indexer reads it and your wallet reports it.

    The status stays Creation in progress through all of that, and only moves to Wallet visible when the indexer and your wallet agree the inscription exists. That is deliberate: a broadcast is not a result.

    You can close the tab. The work continues without your browser. See orders you started for how to get back.

  9. Verify it.

    Three checks, from weakest to strongest:

    1. The order page shows Wallet visible and gives you the reveal transaction id.
    2. Portfolio lists the inscription under your connected wallet.
    3. Paste your Ordinals address into Explore, or the transaction id into any Bitcoin explorer, and confirm the output exists and is at your address.

    The third is the one that does not depend on Inscribe being right.

Expected result

Section titled “Expected result”

An inscription held at your Ordinals address, on a 546-satoshi output, with a reveal transaction id you can look up anywhere. Your payment address is lighter by the total you approved.

Common failure states

Section titled “Common failure states”
What you seeWhat it meansWhat to do
Awaiting payment, and you did payThe payment has not appeared at the commit address yet, or it went somewhere elseWait a few minutes. Then check the transaction actually went to the commit address. Do not pay again
Payment below the quoteYou sent less than the totalTop the same address up to the quoted amount. The flow resumes
The hour ran outThe price quote expiredStart a new order at a current price. If you already paid, do not pay again, see recovery
The payment is not confirmingYour fee rate was too low for current conditionsUse Fix My Payment or Bump Stuck TX. See recovery routes
A source is unavailableAn index the workspace reads is down or catching upReading and drafting keep working. Writes stay paused, and nothing already signed is at risk
The screen you clicked does not openA release landed while your tab was openReload. Nothing you started is lost

Recovery route

Section titled “Recovery route”

If anything goes wrong after you have paid, the order is not lost and the signing key is not discarded. Start at recovery routes, which covers unpaid orders, underpayment, stuck payments, closed tabs and failed reveals.

Section titled “Related”