Ownership lives on outputs
You will get from this page: the single mental model that explains how these assets move, how they are lost, and why one output can quietly carry hundreds of things.
Plain language
Section titled “Plain language”A transparent Zcash transaction consumes outputs and creates new ones, like bills handed over and change handed back. Zerdinals and ZRunes attach to those outputs. Owning an asset means controlling the private key that can spend the output it currently sits on. There is no registry beside the chain, no account, and no undo.
When the output is spent:
- a Zerdinal moves to the first transparent non-data output of the spending transaction;
- ZRune balances pool with everything else the transaction spent and are allocated to outputs by the transaction’s edicts, with a default rule for anything left over;
- a ZRC-20 transfer inscription delivers its committed amount to the first transparent output.
Why it matters
Section titled “Why it matters”Everything protective and everything dangerous about these assets follows from one fact: the output does not know what it carries. To the network it is a small amount of ZEC. Only an indexer that has read the chain knows an artifact is riding on it. So the asset moves when the output moves, whoever spends it and for whatever reason, including a wallet paying a fee.
One output can carry many assets
Section titled “One output can carry many assets”Gathering many inscriptions onto a single output is ordinary practice on this chain, and outputs carrying hundreds of inscriptions exist on mainnet.
This matters when you spend. An output is spent whole: you cannot send part of one. If an output carries three hundred inscriptions and you spend it, all three hundred move to whoever receives it, in one transaction, whether or not you meant to move more than one. Nothing about the ZEC amount on the output hints at how much is riding on it.
So before you spend, check what the output actually carries rather than what you remember putting there. The ZordiScan page for an address lists every inscription against the output holding it, and the per-output verdict the product publishes names every asset on an output rather than the first one it finds.
A concrete example
Section titled “A concrete example”You inscribe No. 100000 to address t1...abc. Later you use the same seed
in a general-purpose wallet and send someone 0.05 ZEC. The wallet, knowing
nothing about inscriptions, selects the inscription’s output as part of the
payment. No. 100000 now belongs to the payee, or was destroyed if the
output was consumed as fee value. The transaction looked completely
ordinary while it happened.
Safety boundary
Section titled “Safety boundary”- Keep artifact addresses separate from spending addresses.
- Check an address on ZordiScan before spending from it.
- Prefer a wallet that consults the per-output asset verdict, which fails closed: while any block is unread, unknown outputs are reported as unchecked rather than clear.
Technical detail
Section titled “Technical detail”The successor rules (which output an asset moves to, and when a spend is a burn or a shielded terminal state instead) are normative and deterministic. They are specified in Zerdinals v1 and ZRunes v1.