This article is about what are ordinal wallets. In the realm of cryptocurrencies, wallets serve as tools to store, manage, and transact digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Among these, a distinct breed called "ordinal wallets" stands out due to their utilization of a cryptographic innovation termed "ordinal signatures."
What are Ordinal Wallets?
If you are familiar with the world of cryptocurrencies, you may have heard of the term "wallet" before. A wallet is a software or hardware device that allows you to store, send and receive digital assets such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or any other token. However, not all wallets are created equal.
Ordinal wallets are a special kind of wallet that use a novel cryptographic technique called "ordinal signatures". Ordinal signatures are a way of signing transactions that preserve the order in which they were created, without revealing any other information. This means that ordinal wallets can prevent some common attacks that plague regular wallets, such as double-spending, replaying, or reordering transactions.
How do Ordinal Wallets work?
Ordinal wallets solve regular wallet problems by using ordinal signatures instead of regular signatures. Ordinal signatures are a way of signing transactions that preserve the order in which they were created, without revealing any other information. They work as follows:
- Each ordinal wallet has a pair of keys: an ordinal public key and an ordinal private key. The ordinal public key is derived from the regular public key using a one-way function (a function that is easy to compute but hard to invert). The ordinal private key is derived from the regular private key using another one-way function.
- When an ordinal wallet wants to send money to another ordinal wallet, it creates a transaction that specifies the amount, the recipient's ordinal public key, and a counter (a number that increases by one every time a new transaction is created). Then, it signs the transaction with its ordinal private key and broadcasts it to the network.
- When an ordinal wallet receives a transaction from another ordinal wallet, it verifies that the signature matches the sender's ordinal public key and that the counter is higher than the last counter it received from that sender. If both conditions are met, it accepts the transaction as valid and updates its balance accordingly.
The advantages of ordinal wallets are:
- They do not rely on the network to confirm transactions. Transactions are instantly valid as soon as they are signed and received by the recipient.
- They prevent double-spending, replaying, and reordering attacks. Transactions are uniquely identified by their counters and cannot be duplicated or modified.
- They preserve privacy and anonymity. Transactions only reveal the ordinal public keys of the sender and the recipient, which cannot be linked to their regular public keys or identities.
Bottom Line
In this article, we have discussed what are ordinal wallets. Ordinal wallets are compatible with any cryptocurrency that uses public-key cryptography and can be implemented as a layer on top of existing protocols.
