Coinbase message Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
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The input script of the Coinbase transaction can be anything, and this can be used as a Bitcoin inscription method.
Notable examples:
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Cool data embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
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This is a collection of cool data found in the Bitcoin blockchain using techniques mentioned at: Section "How to extract data from the Bitcoin blockchain". Notably, Ciro Santilli developed his own set of scripts at github.com/cirosantilli/bitcoin-inscription-indexer to find some of this data. This article is based on data analyzed up to around block 831k (February 2024).
Drop some Bitcoins at 3KRk7f2JgekF6x7QBqPHdZ3pPDuMdY3eWR if you are loaded and like this article in order to support some much needed higher educational reform: Section "Sponsor Ciro Santilli's work on OurBigBook.com".
When this kind of non-financial data is embedded into a blockchain some people called an "inscription". The study or "early" inscriptions had been called a form of "archaeology"[ref][ref]. Since this is a collection of archeological artifacts, we call it a "museum"!
Video 1.
My Bitcoin inscription museum by Ciro Santilli
. Source. Introductory video to this article. Edited from Aratu Week 2024 Talk by Ciro Santilli: My Best Random Projects.
One really cool thing about inscriptions is that because blockchains are huge Merkle trees, it is impossible to censor any one inscription without censoring the entire blockchain. It is also really cool to see people treating the Bitcoin blockchain basically like a global social media feed!
Starting on December 2022, ordinal ruleset inscriptions took the bitcoin blockchain by storm, and dwarfed in volume all other previous inscriptions. This museum focuses mostly on non-ordinals, though certain specific ordinal topics that especially interest he curators may be covered, e.g. Ordinal ruleset inscription porn and ordinal ASCII art inscription.
Hidden surprises in the Bitcoin blockchain by Ken Shirriff (2014) is a mandatory precursor to this article and contains the most interesting examples of the time. But much happened since Ken's article which we try to cover. This analysis is also a bit more data oriented through our usage of scripting.
Artifacts can be organized in various ways:
In this article we've done a mixture of:
  • themes: if multiple items fall in a theme, we tend to put it there first
  • then by media type if they don't fit any specific theme
  • then by encoding
  • and finally chronologically within each section
Who said it was easy to be a museum curator!
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Force of Will Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
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ASCII art of a Force of Will, a famous and powerful Magic: The Gathering card first printed in 1996.
This is Ciro Santilli's personal favorite ASCII art he has found in the blockchain so far. Also Ciro could not find any other previous source of this, so there is some chance it is original. One can dream.
The choice of card is probably linked to the function of the card in the game of Magic: The Gathering. This card essentially prevents the opponent from casting a spell they are about to cast. The presumed intended meaning of this art is further accentuated by the old card type term "interrupt" (late renamed to "instant"), which suggests that "this ASCII art is an interruption to the normal monetary transactions of the blockchain".
One of also reminded of the prayer wars interruption attempts. We could not however identify anything specific that this ASCII art might have tried to interrupt besides the normal flow of monetary transactions.
If one goes full art critic mode, it is also tempting to draw a parallel between the card's "You may pay 1 life" alternative casting cost (as opposed to 5 mana, 3 and two blue, which is a very large cost for most games) as being a reference to the money spent by the uploader of the art to upload it.
TODO understand exactly how it was encoded and why it is so weird. The UUUU has a slightly weird encoding which we fixed by hand here TODO understand.
 -------------------------------------
|  Force of Will               3 U U  |
|  ---------------------------------  |
| |                  ////////////   | |
| |                ////() ()\////\  | |
| |               ///_\ (--) \///\  | |
| |        )      ////  \_____///\\ | |
| |       ) \      /   /   /    /   | |
| |    ) /   \     |   |  /   _/    | |
| |   ) \  (  (   /   / /   / \     | |
| |  / ) ( )  / (    )/(    )  \    | |
| |  \(_)/(_)/  /UUUU \  \\\/   |   | |
| .---------------------------------. |
| Interrupt                           |
| ,---------------------------------, |
| | You may pay 1 life and remove a | |
| | blue card in your hand from the | |
| | game instead of paying Force of | |
| | Will's casting cost.  Effects   | |
| | that prevent or redirect damage | |
| | cannot be used to counter this  | |
| | loss of life.                   | |
| | Counter target spell.           | |
| `---------------------------------` |
|                                     l
| Illus.  Terese Nelsen               |
 -------------------------------------
Figure 1.
Force of Will Magic: The Gathering card (Alliances)
Source. A high resolution scan of the original card depicted in the ASCII art for comparison.
The following two ASCII transactions:
tx 0f05c47a8caafadecc10d70ba3bf010eaf6bb416b5e1ad7b01cf3445f5fb7a1c
I am. Therefore, I have come to be.

-- Hyena


tx e6d48f6912929a58a2ee30c13768058777d8547215c27109b5cb0724e7abaaba
Erich,
Bro, this looks excellent!!
-Duriel
suggest this ASCII art might have been uploaded by Figure "Erich Erstu", AKA Hyena, creator of cryptograffiti.info, a service which would have allowed uploading ASCII content to the blockchain.
The only other mention of "Duriel" in the blockchain is tx 140562ceb42fc8943fa52ccc0ddbb11ca2d88dae9b5240d7a4b46864538c515a which has some freedom of speech comments and gives the email:
Duriel@paystamper.com = 1HcuhfTAiQCt6KdMG2rZLXsTcKYj9nLDhS
paystamper.com was some other blockchain service from circa 2015:
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Incoming links Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
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By Ciro Santilli:
By others:
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Rickrolling Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
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Rickrolling lyrics were mined several times into the blockchain.
The first currently known instance is as a link right during the prayer wars on block 142573 (2011-08-25) as the miner message:
Militant atheists, bit.ly/naNhG2 -- happy now?"
which redirects to www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGDuExhS6Nw&blockchain
Around block block 246k (e.g. 27b7c526489dac8245747fa1c425a2e3eb07dea57b294eb4ae583fec9b859fcf, 2013-10-17) we note several transactions starting with a XML format <CG SZ="1156"><MG>... the first one being 0b4efe49ea1454020c4d51a163a93f726a20cd75ad50bb9ed0f4623c141a8008 As mentioned not very clearly at www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photographs.html#ref12 the content of the first <MG><payload></MG> is a Base64 encoded string
Catagory: Poetry
Title: Never Gonna Give You Up
Performer: Rick Astley
Writer: Mike Stock, Matt Aitken, Pete Waterman
Label: RCA Records
followed by lyrics also base64 encoded as part of the XML metadata. Hidden surprises in the Bitcoin blockchain by Ken Shirriff (2014) was not able to identify the exact format either. At twitter.com/EMBII4U/status/1655831533750562816 EMBII mentions that this was part of an upload test.
tx 15b11e8d4e5b9425f024b381ba0cb7a54a35e52389bb4855f505772ce685b39c (2014-06-24): starting from this transaction, the lyrics were inscribed several times via input scripts. Then again:
  • 8bb9db70e24202fdfd0e48b57a11a407e6c8c0e76d879634b801b4345b8810b2
  • b881afa519804a3c93a3c99481517ca8ae070b84c04e8e7a2bfb808e043f9771
  • 70c8405bd0ec10bea49b78a819dfbf46c1082e7e620588f9da65a90b71e52bbd
  • fc4e382793757858bec4b87527caa4bf2e6f71bb2f5a77bb41a45ddb9ed9d409
  • f011e71b711aa54a0c824244fff83fb8b1e1921804624fa0523a6e61612b7f6f
  • a8691cdbca5b82e4e48812e48b7a09e4757801fd3909a09975de957d1bfb52dc
  • d8946aa464be464674bba6d15729d75572ec75dda49fe7ff0ede1a25ca054941
  • d02864cd57c9d041dbd9d6f24327f347b92697a8bc3c86cdf8b738063c6ad002
  • 9b78962d840f1ff681e5042264e4d0359cda98ce49d97569df14ce956622b966
  • 7bdc22fb35f0a8eb6241782a306a8904fb6f793126ff106a04a96f9f223cb8e1
  • e24a4085c54a6362e615f8eab758c12d80e488b73757e6d2b8ab6bfc8be7007e
  • 4257f4980955d8376ee1c6bccb4396da726e4ae13d758e47dc4e0775019723f5
  • a09b49e9374d43386a6a986944e3dcf515c7e1c38324836df5333b8adbe57797
  • 03096688dbb874f7c571691e4241a298284bf4184be339b148f1b48f383a1d7c
  • 62f8b228b6126354736d36d9f3b91882bb81eca7702b74fba6471abc7db96a03 (2015-09-30)
They were mega obnoxious!!! Who does this kind of crap for more than one year!!!
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Divine Praises Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
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The prayer recited by Luke Dashjr in the Prayer wars of the Bitcoin blockchain in 2011.
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Luke Dashjr Updated 2025-02-22 +Created 1970-01-01
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Accounts:
Author of the prayer side of the Prayer wars.
According to LinkedIn he studied at the Benedictine College in Kansas.
TODO is his real birthname "Luke Dash Jr."?
Apparently he had his coins stolen in January 2023, then worth $3.5m: blog.cryptostars.is/luke-dashjr-an-original-bitcoin-developer-loses-all-his-btc-88421c395ce5p...
www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/4936kw/lukejr_is_a_seriously_a_super_crazy_person_quotes/ "Luke-Jr is a seriously a super crazy person quotes gigathread." (2016) on Reddit. Apparently he has some fun views of life.
Figure 1. Source.
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