Cost Analysis
Approximate costs for BINST operations at 10 sat/vB fee rate.
| Operation | Mechanism | Approx. cost |
|---|---|---|
| Create institution | Ordinal inscription (~500B text) | ~$2–5 |
| Create process template | Child inscription (~300B) | ~$1–3 |
| Record step execution | Child inscription (~200B) | ~$0.50–2 |
| Etch membership Rune | Runestone in OP_RETURN | ~$1–3 |
| Mint membership for 1 user | Runestone transaction | ~$0.50–1 |
| Transfer institution admin | Send UTXO (standard tx) | ~$0.30–1 |
| Total: institution + template + 10 members | ~$15–30 |
Testnet4 is free during development. Mainnet costs scale with fee rates but remain reasonable for institutional operations that happen infrequently.
Locked Sats at Scale
Each entity UTXO locks 546 sats (the dust limit). These sats are not burned — they are recoverable when the vault UTXO is spent (admin transfer, reinscription, etc.).
| Scale | Sats locked | BTC locked | At $100K/BTC |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 institution | 546 | 0.00000546 | $0.55 |
| 100 institutions | 54,600 | 0.00054600 | $54.60 |
| 10,000 institutions | 5,460,000 | 0.05460000 | $5,460 |
Transaction fees (commit + reveal) dwarf the dust padding by 5–10×. The real cost optimization target is batching and fee rate timing, not the locked sats.
Future Optimization: Batching
Bitcoin-side operations (inscribe + etch + distribute runes) can be grouped into fewer transactions:
Single Bitcoin TX:
Input: admin's UTXO (from taproot vault)
Output 0: inscription envelope (institution identity)
Output 1: rune etch (INSTITUTION•MEMBER)
Output 2: rune transfer to member_1
Output 3: rune transfer to member_2
Output 4: change back to vault
This is planned for Phase 3 — a BINST-aware transaction builder that composes Bitcoin-side operations into minimal transactions.