This is part 2 of 3 about bitcoin recursive inscriptions. You may wish to read part 1 of 3 first. It reviews what bitcoin ordinal inscriptions are and sets up how they differ from recursive inscriptions.
What can be done with recursive inscriptions?
Ordinals immutably inscribe data onto the Bitcoin chain. With recursives, this is where things get questionable, or theoretical, and then perhaps get revolutionary.
Case Study number 2
When I started writing this article, I'd only planned to ponder what I see as amazing opportunities ahead that recursives provide. While researching, I realized that I could use recursive inscriptions to improve my prior ordinal inscriptions described in part 1.
The ordinal where I placed everything Satoshi publicly wrote onto the Bitcoin blockchain is there and it works. But, it's rather hidden as an invisible, zipped txt file. So, using this repo | Tweet as a reference, I mashed up a quick html file.
The html page I created gave a little context about what the inscription actually is and I included a "download" button. So, rather than seeing literally nothing on the inscription as in the image below left, someone will now see the html page and a button as in the image in below right...much improved.
The glory of recursives is that the bulk of the content, the zip file which was a bit big and pricey to initially inscribe, was added in with very, very little code. The line below is all that was needed to add the download button:
<a href="/content/1dc0bb20d4e9ffe79fef001abaaa3253ddaeba91aa951bdf4a4e507dc246eb7fi0"><button class="button button1"><b>Satoshi's words</b></button></a>Additionally, the Bitcoin logo image was simply added with an img src reference to the B logo that is already inscribed. You can see it on any ordinal explorer, like here, screenshot below.
The screenshots below illustrate how recursives pull data (images in this case) directly from the Bitcoin blockchain using <code>/content/inscription_ID_number</code>. The "B" logo is on chain, so, prior to inscribing my new RI, the B logo does not appear in a web browser. The code for each is exactly the same. So, after inscription, the image can be accessed on chain and therefore appears.
The entire code for my new recursive inscription, after stripping out white space and comments to save space, follows:
<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en";><title>Satoshi's Words - Kicking the Hornet's Nest</title><style>body{color: #FFF; background-color:#F2A900;}.content{margin: auto; max-width: 900px; text-align: center;}.main{background-color: white; color: black; padding: 20px; margin-top: 20px;}h1{color: #000000;}h2{color: #36454F;}h4{margin-top:50px; color: #000;}a.footer{color: #000; text-decoration: none;}.button{border: none; color: black; padding: 15px 32px; text-align: center; display: inline-block; font-size: 16px; margin: 4px 2px; cursor: pointer;}.button1{background-color: #F2A900; border-radius: 12px;}/* Bitcoin Orange */</style><div class="content"> <H1>Satoshi's words - "Kicking the Hornet's Nest"</H1> <img src="/content/b491b66c3d3835f0ee10cf7dac2966da953d3c53cc28f021637cbe9eeb249d8bi0" width="300"> <div class="main"> <h2>Kicking the Hornet's Nest</h2><h3>Satoshi Nakamoto's public writings in chronological order. <i>All</i> of them.</h3><p></p><p>These words are <i>entirely on the Bitcoin blockchain</i>. The words that started bitcoin now live on the Bitcoin network that they started.</p><p></p><p>Download all of <a href="/content/1dc0bb20d4e9ffe79fef001abaaa3253ddaeba91aa951bdf4a4e507dc246eb7fi0">Satoshi's words</a> <i>directly from the Bitcoin blockchain</i>.</p><p></p><p><center><a href="/content/1dc0bb20d4e9ffe79fef001abaaa3253ddaeba91aa951bdf4a4e507dc246eb7fi0"><button class="button button1"><b>Satoshi's words</b></button></a></center></p><p></p><p><a href="https://hive.blog/@crrdlx/satoshi" target=_blank>See all formats (pdf, txt, and hold-in-your-hand printed copy of "Kicking")</a>.</p><p>₿💪</p><p>Made with ❤️ by <a href="https://hive.blog/@crrdlx/about" target="_blank">crrdlx</a></p></div><h4>Built on Bitcoin <img src="/content/b491b66c3d3835f0ee10cf7dac2966da953d3c53cc28f021637cbe9eeb249d8bi0" width=20></h4></div>
This simple recursive inscription that I made, number 34145265, exemplifies the power of recursive inscriptions. By using already-inscribed images (the B logo) and data (the large zip file), see image below, the size and cost of this new-and-improved recursive was much lower than it would have been otherwise. In essence, recursives leverage the power of open source to build on the shoulders of others.
Recursives used for this inscription #34145265, as seen on https://www.ord.io/34145265
I was a bit disappointed that the links and button don't work entirely as expected. To "get them to work", you must either right-click and open in a new window. Or, go open it from this explorer and choose "View Content" to enable the links. My guess is that in the future, as recursive inscriptions evolve further, this won't be necessary and links will work from within the explorer itself.
Potential
The case study above is very simple and limited in scope. It's using an image and a zip file that are already on the Bitcoin blockchain and easily-and-cheaply aggregated them into a cleaner, more user-friendly UX.
The broader potential of recursive inscriptions is enormous. Imagine that every ordinal inscription was one brick. And imagine that, once fired in the furnace, that brick could be easily and cheaply used by anyone anywhere on the globe with a few simple words of code. The building blocks are not only there, but they grow in time and likely grow exponentially.
This is how we grow, "Brick by brick."