Delegate

Inscriptions may nominate a delegate inscription. Requests for the content of an inscription with a delegate will instead return the content, content type and content encoding of the delegate. This can be used to cheaply create copies of an inscription.

Specification

To create an inscription I with delegate inscription D:

• Create an inscription D. Note that inscription D does not have to exist when making inscription I. It may be inscribed later. Before inscription D is inscribed, requests for the content of inscription I will return a 404.
• Include tag 11, i.e. OP_PUSH 11, in I, with the value of the serialized binary inscription ID of D, serialized as the 32-byte TXID, followed by the four-byte little-endian INDEX, with trailing zeroes omitted.

NB The bytes of a bitcoin transaction ID are reversed in their text representation, so the serialized transaction ID will be in the opposite order.

Example

An example of an inscription which delegates to 000102030405060708090a0b0c0d0e0f101112131415161718191a1b1c1d1e1fi0:

OP_FALSE
OP_IF
  OP_PUSH "ord"
  OP_PUSH 11
  OP_PUSH 0x1f1e1d1c1b1a191817161514131211100f0e0d0c0b0a09080706050403020100
OP_ENDIF

Note that the value of tag 11 is decimal, not hex.

The delegate field value uses the same encoding as the parent field. See provenance for more examples of inscription ID encodings

See examples for on-chain examples of inscriptions that feature this functionality.