you don’t need any of this to submit. the form takes a link or a description and we work the rest out together. this page is here for anyone who wants to arrive prepared, and for accepted artists deciding exactly which bytes go on bitcoin forever.
the short version
send the version you would want someone to find in fifty years, at whatever size it is. once we agree on the file, it gets frozen and fingerprinted, and from that moment it can’t be touched. everything below is detail underneath those two sentences.
formats
almost anything with a file type works. png, webp, avif, jpeg, and svg for images. plain text or markdown for writing. html for generative and interactive work. audio and video are possible within what bitcoin can hold. the file type gets recorded alongside the bytes, so it stays readable as software changes around it.
choosing an efficient format is part of the work the storage fund does with you. a well-optimized webp and a careless png of the same image can differ by several times in what it costs to store, and that cost is ours to carry, not a reason to shrink what you send.
size
send the work as it exists. there is no size you need to hit before talking to us and no prep work to do first. getting a file ready for bitcoin is part of what the storage fund does, and we would rather do that with you than have you guess at it.
what size actually affects is cost, and cost is ours to carry. bitcoin does put a real ceiling on how much fits in a single inscription, so for a very large work we talk through what the best onchain version is and record honestly what it is. that conversation happens with you, after you submit, not before.
freezing the file
once we agree on the exact file, it gets hashed. that hash is a fingerprint of those precise bytes, it goes into the permanent record, and it’s what lets anyone in the future prove the work they’re looking at is the one you approved.
we’ll send you the hash and ask you to run it on your own copy so we both know we’re looking at the same thing before anything is permanent. it’s one command and we’ll give you it.
your name on it, permanently
the inscription can carry a small credit line onchain: artist, title, year. it’s optional, it’s permanent, and you approve the exact wording before it goes anywhere. declining is completely normal, and attribution lives in the registry either way.
what we’ll ask you
- is this one work, or the start of a series? if more is coming, there are onchain structures worth setting up before the first inscription rather than after.
- is it entirely yours? samples, stock, fonts, collaborators, found material. we go through this before anything is inscribed, every time.
- what do you want to do with it? keep the inscription as the collectible, or sell a token elsewhere and let the fund archive the sat.
- what should the record say? your name as you want it written, the title, the year.
the answers shape the setup, and there are no wrong ones. common questions covers the rest.