Ordinacks

Motto
Ordinack
Stacks

Background

Can you imagine Ordinals giving birth to Ordinacks? In 1837, Charles Darwin thought of a tree of life where leafs and branches represent species and nodes of the tree represent a point in the past where a common ancestor has been split into two groups that then evolve independently.

Darwin's first tree of life

The way it roughly works in evolution is that entire population is split geographically (or otherwise) in a way that prevents breeding between the two separated groups. These gene pools then evolve independently due to differences in natural selection pressures leading to emergence of distinct, yet closely related, species.

A similar idea was recently used in movie Avatar: The Way of Water. Colones Miles Quaritch has already died, but somehow, his psyche has been embedded in new Miles Quaritch avatar.

Now it is important to note that an avatar of Miles Quaritch does not capture a true evolutionary process because evolution works on groups, not individuals. However, there are some notable similarities, especially the below logical facts. Pay attention to these as logic described in them will form the basis of Ordinacks smart contract build on top of Stacks blockchain:

The avatar is directly derived from the original human. This relationship is direct and provable. In some sense the human is the "mother" of the avatar.
The avatar is NOT a copy of the original human, despite obvious resemblances.
The avatar and the human are distinct and independent from each other, therefore they can evolve in their own way regardless of what is going on with the other. However there is still a possibility of them influencing each other. Although this was not the case for Miles Quaritch as he was dead while his avatar was alive!

OK but why all this fuss about humans and their avatars in the context of Ordinacks?

Ordinacks are related to Ordinals in the same way that avatars are related to humans:

The Ordinack is derived from Ordinal via a cryptographic proof of ownership. In other words, Ordinal can give birth to Ordinacks if and only if such a cryptographic proof has been presented.
The Ordinack is not Ordinal and Ordinal is not Ordinacks but there is resemblance through cryptography.
Ordinacks and Ordinals are independent. The Ordinal can change hands, and so does the Ordinacks. Therefore the only thing we can be sure of is that the first owner of Ordinacks (when it was minted) was in possession of a given Ordinals.

Problems

What problems do Ordinacks solve?

Problem 1: since Ordinals exist on L1 bitcoin chain, they cannot partake in fully expressive contracts and therefore royalties understood in the traditional sense are not possible
Solution: Ordinacks can then be part of Stacks ecosystem, engage in smart contracts and be traded on secondary markets with royalties
Problem 2: Ordinal inscriptions are immutable - what you write on bitcoin L1 blockchain will stay there forever
Solution: NFTs point to potentially mutable data. In case of Ordinacks, they point to definitely immutable data. If there is an error in original inscription, Ordinack that points to that inscription can be used to correct an error
Problem 3: Bitcoin block space is limited. As adoption for inscriptions increases, it could drive pressure on fees pushing up the floor on transaction costs for Ordinals
Solution: Ordinacks have the potential to provide a more cost-effective and efficient way to mint and store Bitcoin-based NFTs while also helping to address some of the scalability issues.

High-level overview of the implementation

What we are proposing here can be thought of as a "bridge" between bitcoin and stacks blockchains - a user who owns an Ordinal has a provenance to mint an Ordinack that corresponds to a particular Ordinal only if a cryptographic proof of ownership of the bitcoin address that holds the Ordinal is presented. Once this happens the Ordinack is minted together with a pointer that links it to Ordinal. This "link" between Ordinack and Ordinal is robust because (1) inscription data is immutable and exists on the most decentralised chain (Bitcoin), (2) Ordinack is created only when a proof of ownership is presented.

It is worth noting here that while Ordinacks can be thought of as a "bridge" from bitcoin, this is just an allegory because no burn or MultiSig custody based freezing of native bitcoin is implied at all! An Ordinack is just an "avatar" of the ordinal (an extension so to speak) and lives independently from it.

For more info regarding the implementation check out our GitHub page!