Cursed Inscriptions I still think one of the most under appreciated sectors of ordinals is cursed inscriptions This started as one big thread but there’s no chance people would’ve read the whole thing, so I’m breaking it into 5 First: What are Cursed Inscriptions? For anyone that isn’t aware, cursed inscriptions are inscriptions which didn’t initially fit into the guidelines of ord, but were technically valid (edge cases in the protocol) The main ways to create cursed inscriptions were: - Reinscriptions - Batch inscriptions - Parent Child Inscriptions - OP_66 There are a bunch of other niche edge cases but majority were created through one of the above methods The first 3 being really useful functions in Ordinals and OP_66 being a bit of a cheat code to create cursed inscriptions OP_66 is still a weird one so I’ll write a full post on that later, but a significant amount of the early cursed inscriptions are OP_66 Why are they Cursed? Cursed inscriptions are inscriptions with a negative inscription number They have a negative inscription number because at the time they were inscribed, the method which was used wasn’t in the ord code, even though technically they were valid (ORD was in alpha so things were still getting built as we went) This meant they weren’t assigned a positive inscription number at the time If we gave them a positive inscription number in the future, it would alter the numbers of everything inscribed after them, which wasn’t popular in a lot collectors eyes So after a long debate cursed inscriptions and the “Jubilee” were locked in The Jubilee In January 2024 (Block 824543) we had the Jubilee. This was the block height with which all of these edge cases in the future become blessed The methods which were used to create cursed inscriptions now just create regular inscription numbers We can no longer create cursed inscriptions However everything done before this block height will still remain cursed What’s interesting about cursed inscriptions? Cursed inscriptions are now a thing of the past, no more can be created, meaning scarcity is set in stone. Collectibility and scarcity go hand in hand, and with them no longer being possible to create, scarcity is baked in for eternity I also see them a little bit like the faulty/recalled action figures or baseball cards The most valuable are usually the ones that were recalled for certain reasons making them much scarcer and more desirable Cursed inscriptions are the glitch in the protocol that was only possible for a short period of time, they’ve got a unique narrative and story that can no longer be reproduced Supply There are 472k cursed inscriptions 230k of these are text inscriptions So the real number of art (images and html) is probably around 200 - 240k With a lot of these being random or people creating a cursed version of their positive inscriptions So the actual number of original collections is very low Purely a guess but I'm assuming it's closer to 100 - 150k with original artwork Collections We still don’t hear a lot about them and I think that’s because there aren’t actually that many original collections released yet @OnChainMonkey is the obvious one, and there are some other great ones like @Wizzystwizzy999 , @SkullxNFT, @BitcoinBoos, @ordzaar, Nakamoto Archives (@lifofifo) and a bunch of great collections (more in future posts) But a lot are still waiting to be released I think like NodeMonkes held onto their early collection so long, a lot of the cursed collections are being held onto for the future Next thread I’ll touch on either early or 10k cursed collections Stay tuned 👿