Countable membership coding ($(D,R,n),D\subseteq \omega ,R\subseteq D^2$)

A countable well-founded relation that is an extensional relation codes a transitive set through the Mostowski collapse theorem. Adding a distinguished point selects one decoded set. Every hereditarily countable set has such a code by enumerating its transitive membership ancestry. There are only continuum many codes. In ZFC, selecting least codes in a well-order gives an injection of the hereditarily countable sets into a set of size $2^{{\aleph }_0}$.