Quantum Cats: The First Ever Collection of Evolving Inscriptions on Bitcoin
Quantum Cats is a groundbreaking collection of 3333 Ordinals Inscriptions that evolve over time, revealing different artwork. This unique collection marks the first of its kind, created during a time of high fees and an unpredictable future fee market. The technical implementation of Quantum Cats presents a fascinating engineering challenge that offers insights for future Ordinals creators and Bitcoin application developers.
The experience we aimed to create with Quantum Cats involved users holding inscriptions in self-custody Bitcoin wallets, allowing for specific ordinals transfer and the signing of complex transaction types. The artwork for the inscriptions is published on-chain in the witness of a Taproot transaction, ensuring immutability. However, the collection’s evolving nature is achieved through a clever use of recursion, where inscriptions reference the content of others, allowing for composability and re-use of common components.
Each Quantum Cat inscription refers to presigned transactions for traits that are progressively revealed over time. This mechanism, along with the introduction of Layer Connector inscriptions and a common Dispatcher component, enabled the evolution of artwork while maintaining rarity surprises for collectors. The use of presigned transactions required careful fee management, with tools developed to bump fees using Child-Pays-For-Parent (CPFP) techniques.
To optimize fee management and data publication, artwork assets were encrypted and decryption keys were published with Layer Connectors, decoupling data publication from trait reveal. Each Quantum Cat inscription fetches common components containing dispatch, decryption, and rendering code, fetching encrypted artwork and decrypting it for display.
The technical complexities of Quantum Cats required meticulous UTXO management, automated sanity checks, and parallel fee-bumping techniques to ensure smooth operation. The project’s success lies in its ability to deliver an evolving collection of artwork while keeping all assets immutable on the Bitcoin network.
While there are many aspects of the project not covered here, the technical implementation of Quantum Cats offers valuable insights for future inscription projects and developers working with presigned transactions. The innovative approach taken in creating Quantum Cats sets a new standard for evolving digital collectibles on the Bitcoin network.
