Sat Isolation

The inscribed satoshi lives on its own dedicated, minimal UTXO — separate from spending funds.

Reveal Transaction Layout

Reveal TX:
  Input 0:  commit UTXO (inscription envelope in witness)

  Output 0: 546 sats → Taproot vault address (script-guarded)
             ↑ the inscribed sat lives HERE, alone
             ├── NUMS internal key (no key-path spend)
             ├── Leaf 0: admin + 144-block CSV delay
             └── Leaf 1: 2-of-3 committee multisig

  Output 1: change → admin's regular spending wallet
             Normal sats, freely spendable, no inscription.

The pointer tag (Ordinals tag 2) explicitly binds the inscription to the first satoshi of output 0.

Why 546 sats?

546 sats is Bitcoin's dust limit — the minimum UTXO value that Bitcoin Core nodes will relay. A 1-sat UTXO would be rejected by the mempool as "dust." The inscription lives on exactly one sat (the first sat of the output, per Ordinals ordinal theory), but the UTXO must hold ≥ 546 sats to exist on the network. The other 545 sats are padding — locked in the vault, recoverable when the UTXO is spent.

Two Layers of Protection

1. Economic — dust-limit UTXO (546 sats) has no spending value to attract
2. Consensus — Taproot vault script prevents spending even if attempted

Ordinals vs Runes: UTXO Sharing

A single UTXO can carry multiple ordinals (one per sat) and multiple Rune types simultaneously. The risk profile differs:

Merging inscribed UTXOs is dangerous because spending scatters sats across outputs unpredictably (ordinal numbering follows first-in-first-out rules). The pilot isolates each inscription in its own vault UTXO to prevent accidental loss.