Minting on Special Sats

The Bitcoin community often uses the term "sats" but what does it mean? To put it simply, sats are the equivalent of cents to Bitcoin's dollar. Just like a dollar is divided into 100 cents, a Bitcoin is divided into 100 million Satoshis, which are abbreviated as sats. These are digital units that exist on the Bitcoin blockchain. However, with the rise of Ordinal Theory, not all sats are the same; some have a unique value, which makes them "special." Read more.

What are special sats?

Sats are special in how they relate to Bitcoin mining. For instance, you may have heard of an "Uncommon sat" which represent the first sat within each Bitcoin block. Rare sats are just one type of special sat. Some other special sats may have been used in famous historical transactions, like Pizza sats, which were those used in the first IRL purchase of a physical good with Bitcoin — pizza!

Special sats can also be special as they relate to a significant period in time. As another example, sats mined in 2009 are special in that they were mined the first year Bitcoin was live. More specifically, Block 9 sats represent the earliest sats in circulation today.

Each sat also has an deterministically assigned name and number, either of which might carry some meaning when choosing what to inscribe upon.

Special sats can add another dimension to the story you're telling with your creation, like a special canvas for your artwork.

Collecting on Special sats

Collectors can choose to have their individual inscriptions, Prints, and collection mints inscribed on special sats. They can choose between automatic selection or pay a small fee to inscribe it to a custom selected UTXO or special Sat.

If you're a collector, you might want to make the piece you're collecting more special by inscribing it upon a sat you find special. You might choose to inscribe an art piece on an Uncommon rare sat, like the one shown here.

Creators: Inscribing on special sats

Now, if you want to create an individual inscription on Gamma for yourself or to sell in the future, you can select any UTXO/special sat when doing so.

We show you each sat's name, number, the date and block it was minted, and more.

Creators: Prints and Standard Collections

Creators can now send their collectors sat hunting for a specific type of sat that can be used to mint their collection or Prints. Special sat mints require special sats to be selected when minting.

During the submission process, creators can choose to have their inscriptions randomly assigned to any Sat or to select a specific Sat themselves.

If you select the "Yes, require special sats" option, please be aware that collectors will be charged an extra inscription fee. This option enables creators to specify a particular Sat that they want to require their assets to be inscribed with when collectors mint the collection.

Special sat mints can be defined by creators in just a few clicks, and can be mixed and matched. This functions as an "AND", so in the below example, you could say to mint your collection, collectors must bring a Black uncommon palindrome sat originating before January 2014 (this one is tricky, just an example!) 

To mint during a special sat mint, you'll need to bring your own sat. You can discover and buy special sats on special sat marketplaces like Magisat.io.  There, you can hunt and find sats matching specific criteria or find common collections of sats. 

While something like Uncommon sats or Block 9 sats have liquid markets, other sats are harder to track down. Special sat mints incentivize hunting by serving as a free market driven whitelist/mintpass.