An experimental 300-piece collection from Yuga Labs on the Bitcoin blockchain

Today we announced an original and experimental 300-piece generative art collection inscribed onto satoshis that will live on the Bitcoin blockchain: TwelveFold. 

Satoshis are the smallest individually identifiable units of a Bitcoin. An inscribed satoshi can be located by tracking when that satoshi was minted in time via the Ordinal Theory protocol. Inspired by this, our collection explores the relationship between time, mathematics, and variability.

When measuring time, the calculation base used is not uniform and varies from base 60 (60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour) to base 12 (12 months in a year) and so on.

TwelveFold is a base 12 art system localized around a 12x12 grid, a visual allegory for the cartography of data on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The collection includes highly-rendered 3D elements as well as hand-drawn features which serve as an homage to the ordinal inscriptions currently done by hand. 

All of these choices are a departure from what’s expected from Yuga.

But, you know. Fuck doing expected things.

Wait, what is an ordinal inscription?

Bitcoin is a fungible digital currency, but a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) described a method, called inscribing, that allows creators to connect data to an individual satoshi (1/100,000,000th of a Bitcoin) and host metadata (particularly the artwork) on-chain. In effect, this enables satoshis to operate as if they are non-fungible, essentially enabling the concept of NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Stepping into the Ordinals Discord a month ago felt like getting a glimpse of the 2017-era Ethereum NFT ecosystem. It’s the type of energy and excitement we love at Yuga. 

The infrastructure and tooling around inscriptions (or NFTs) on Bitcoin is rapidly progressing, but is still incredibly nascent. Much of the foundational principles that we look for are here: provenance, self-custody, ownership – but the tooling and structure we’ve become accustomed to with Ethereum NFTs isn’t present.

We expect this technology and the ecosystem around it to evolve and become more sophisticated over time, however, we don’t expect it to evolve in the same ways other blockchain NFT ecosystems have.

We’re excited about ordinal inscriptions and what the future holds for digital artifacts on Bitcoin.

What’s next?

We will be announcing more details about timing and the auction mechanics in the coming week. Good luck to all of the bidders—we’re looking forward to sharing this collection with the world.