DUST-20 documentation

Bitcoin Universe support

You can view DUST-20. You cannot trade it. Here is exactly why.

Protocol: DUST-20Registry id dust20, alias dust-20
Chain: BitcoinNetwork: mainnet
Ownership model: UTXOUnits are carried by satoshis in unspent outputs
Carrier: Inscription + spendDeploy and mint are inscribed; movement is a spend
Decimals: 0Balances are whole units only
Document version: 1.1.0Revised 2026-09-01
Lifecycle: ExperimentalNot a ratified multi-party standard
Owning repository: bitcoinuniverseio/dust-20Documentation source of truth

U.1 Recorded state

You can view DUST-20 in Bitcoin Universe products. You cannot trade it there. This page publishes the exact recorded reason rather than leaving it implicit, because knowing why a thing is unavailable is more useful than discovering it at the moment you try.

Marketplace availability: read-only

DUST-20 is registered in the Bitcoin Universe capability registry with marketplace availability read-only and mode read-only. Every mutating marketplace action is unavailable. This is a deliberate closed gate, not a missing feature or a temporary outage.

Marketplace availability: read-only
Marketplace mode: read-only
Order book source: Read-only legacy Universe catalog
Ownership source of truth: No safe typed mutation resolver is configured
Settlement: No supported settlement while ownership is unverifiable
Protocol state source: DUST-20 indexer discovery and portfolio data
Mutation gate: DUST-20 mutations are unavailable until a typed authoritative ownership resolver replaces the retired address-only legacy flow.
Freshness policy: Discovery is non-authoritative for mutations.
Confirmation policy: No supported marketplace mutation reaches settlement.
Reorganization policy: Read-only catalog data follows its discovery source.

Each row above is the recorded value, reproduced word for word. The mutation gate, the ownership statement and the settlement statement are the three that matter: together they say that no configured source can prove who owns a DUST-20 output well enough to move money against it, so nothing that would move money is enabled.

U.2 Marketplace actions

The full action matrix. Three read actions are available. Ten mutating actions are not, all for the same recorded reason.

Every marketplace action, and whether DUST-20 supports it
Action	Available	Mode or recorded reason
view	YES	`read-only`
view-collection	YES	`read-only`
view-activity	YES	`read-only`
list	NO	DUST-20 mutations are unavailable until a typed authoritative ownership resolver replaces the retired address-only legacy flow.
update-listing	NO	DUST-20 mutations are unavailable until a typed authoritative ownership resolver replaces the retired address-only legacy flow.
unlist	NO	DUST-20 mutations are unavailable until a typed authoritative ownership resolver replaces the retired address-only legacy flow.
buy	NO	DUST-20 mutations are unavailable until a typed authoritative ownership resolver replaces the retired address-only legacy flow.
sell	NO	DUST-20 mutations are unavailable until a typed authoritative ownership resolver replaces the retired address-only legacy flow.
make-offer	NO	DUST-20 mutations are unavailable until a typed authoritative ownership resolver replaces the retired address-only legacy flow.
accept-offer	NO	DUST-20 mutations are unavailable until a typed authoritative ownership resolver replaces the retired address-only legacy flow.
cancel-offer	NO	DUST-20 mutations are unavailable until a typed authoritative ownership resolver replaces the retired address-only legacy flow.
settle	NO	DUST-20 mutations are unavailable until a typed authoritative ownership resolver replaces the retired address-only legacy flow.
reconcile	NO	DUST-20 mutations are unavailable until a typed authoritative ownership resolver replaces the retired address-only legacy flow.

What a read-only listing surface actually is

The order book source is recorded as a read-only legacy Universe catalog. If you see a DUST-20 listing inside a Bitcoin Universe product, it is catalog data: a record that someone once published an offer. It is not proof that the output is still unspent, not proof of who controls it, and not something the product will let you act on. Freshness policy is recorded as Discovery is non-authoritative for mutations, which is exactly what that means.

U.3 Product surfaces

What each Bitcoin Universe surface does with DUST-20, from the registry entry rather than from intent.

Bitcoin Universe product surfaces that handle DUST-20
Surface	Actions	What that means
Core	view discover view-collection view-activity view-transaction	Discovery and browsing of DUST-20 tokens, collections, activity and transactions.
Wallet	view send receive	Balance display and ordinary Bitcoin send and receive of the outputs that carry units.
Inscribe	deploy mint transfer	Building deploy and mint inscriptions, and the spend that moves an allocation.

Chain and network: Bitcoin mainnet.
Ownership model: UTXO. Units are carried by satoshis in unspent outputs, so a wallet send of the carrying output is a DUST-20 movement whether or not the wallet knows it.
Address roles: Payment and ordinals. A DUST-20 allocation can sit under either role, which is why a wallet must treat colored outputs as distinct from spendable change.
Decimals: None. Balances are whole units.
Protocol state source: DUST-20 indexer discovery and portfolio data, served by the first-party index-dust20 service.

A wallet send is not automatically a safe DUST-20 send

Wallet support is recorded as view, send and receive: it can display balances and move the outputs. It does not follow that an arbitrary wallet transaction preserves your units. The output layout still decides the outcome, and a wallet that subtracts a fee from the largest output, or omits a colored change output, will destroy units while reporting success. Read the security considerations before sending.

U.4 Why it is read-only

Three things explain the gate: where the data comes from, what the retired path could and could not prove, and what would have to exist before the gate could open.

The read path is first-party

Bitcoin Universe engineering rules require that all Bitcoin production blockchain data come from Universe-owned and Universe-operated nodes, APIs, databases and indexers, with no third-party fallback path. DUST-20 discovery and portfolio data is served by the first-party index-dust20 service, which reads a Universe-operated Bitcoin Core node and the shared Universe Ord 0.29 instance.

Why a boolean output check is not enough to trade on

The retired legacy path answered one question: is this listing output still good, true or false. That answer cannot prove the exact amount, the owning address, the schema of the response, the freshness of the observation, or authority to settle. Every one of those is required before a purchase can move someone else’s money, so the route is deliberately non-executable rather than best-effort.

What would change this

A typed authoritative ownership resolver: first-party, returning identity, exact amount, owning address, outpoint, observation height and coverage, bound to a checkpoint. When one is configured, the capability registry entry changes and marketplace mutations can be reconsidered. Until then, treat every DUST-20 listing surface in Universe products as catalog data only.

The shape of the argument

What a settlement decision needs, and what a boolean availability check provides
Required to move money	Provided by a boolean output check
The ticker identity of the allocation	NO
The exact unit amount	NO
The owning address	NO
The outpoint and its unspent status at a known height	NO
A typed response schema the caller validated	NO
Observation freshness bound to a checkpoint	NO
Authority to settle	NO
Whether one listing id is currently marked good	YES

A single boolean answers the last row and nothing above it. Building a purchase on it would mean signing away buyer funds on the strength of a yes that cannot say what was bought, from whom, or when the answer was true. The gate is closed for that reason, and it stays closed until a resolver exists that answers every row.

This is also the general lesson

If you are integrating DUST-20 anywhere, the same test applies to whatever source you plan to trust. Ask what it proves, not what it returns. A source that cannot state identity, amount, owner, outpoint, height and coverage is a discovery source, and discovery sources are for showing people things, not for settling value. That distinction is the one recorded in DUST-9.7.

What would change this

A typed authoritative ownership resolver, first-party, returning identity, exact amount, owning address, outpoint, observation height and coverage label, bound to a stable checkpoint. When one is configured, the capability registry entry changes and marketplace mutations can be reconsidered against it. Until then, treat every DUST-20 listing surface in Bitcoin Universe products as catalog data only. This is tracked as an open question on the reference page rather than as a roadmap promise.