What this is
You will get from this page: the whole product in one minute, and where to go next. It is written for someone who has never used an inscription product.
The one-minute version
Section titled “The one-minute version”People write things into the Zcash blockchain: images, text, and small token instructions. Once written, those bytes are part of the chain and survive as long as Zcash does. zrunes.io is the record of everything written this way, read directly from a Zcash node its operators run, plus the two things a person does with a record: check it, and add to it.
Four kinds of things live in the record:
- Zerdinals are inscriptions: content written on chain through a commit and reveal pair of transactions. Each completed inscription gets a sequence number that is permanently unique. About Zerdinals.
- ZRC-20 tokens are fungible tokens carried inside legacy inscriptions as small JSON documents. About ZRC-20.
- ZRunes are fungible assets carried in transaction data outputs, with fixed mint terms and a mainnet activation height. About ZRunes.
- Collections group Zerdinals, with an on-chain membership proof where one exists and an honest label where one does not. About collections.
ZordiScan is the explorer inside the product: blocks, transactions, addresses, and every protocol object, each with a friendly reading, a protocol reading, and the raw data. About ZordiScan.
What makes this product different
Section titled “What makes this product different”- Every figure is read from Universe-operated Zcash infrastructure. No third-party chain service is used anywhere, not even as a fallback.
- Where two independent rule sets disagree about ZRC-20, the product shows both readings and names each, rather than choosing one silently.
- Where the chain has not been read in full, the product says which blocks it has read rather than presenting absence as fact.
- Assets that moved into the shielded pool are shown as what they are: provably existing, permanently unobservable.
Ownership, in one sentence
Section titled “Ownership, in one sentence”Owning a Zerdinal or a ZRune balance means controlling the transparent Zcash output it sits on; it moves when that output is spent, and it can be lost the same way, which is why the safety page comes next.
Where to go next
Section titled “Where to go next”| You want to | Go to |
|---|---|
| Avoid the one common way to lose an asset | Safety in sixty seconds |
| See what is live and what is gated today | Current status |
| Inscribe something | Inscribe a Zerdinal |
| Look up an address, block, or artifact | Search |
| Integrate against the API | Public HTTP API |