Nobody can snipe a protected listing
A sale is valid only when Ordinals Wallet co-signs it, and our key can do nothing else: it cannot move, redirect or underpay an inscription. You sign once and pay nothing, your inscription stays in your wallet until it sells, and payment and delivery happen in one Bitcoin transaction.
Updated · For engineers: the transaction-level reference
The problem
A classic ordinals listing is a signature the seller leaves on the marketplace, built so that anyone can complete it. That is what makes trading work without an escrow, and it is also what makes sniping possible. A bot watching the mempool can complete the listing the moment a real buyer tries, replace the buyer's transaction with a higher fee, or front-run a price change. The buyer loses the item and the seller gets no say in who bought it.
How a protected listing works
When you list with protection, your wallet signs two things in one prompt and nothing is broadcast:
- A passthrough. A tiny transaction that moves the inscription into an escrow made for this listing. It carries no fee of its own and can never confirm on its own, so it sits unused until a buyer appears.
- A sale signature. Your promise that the escrow may pay you exactly the listed price. It is valid only alongside a co-signature from Ordinals Wallet.
The escrow is a Taproot output with two ways to spend it: the sale, which needs your key and ours, and a recovery path that needs only your key after 144 blocks (about a day). There is no third way. Delisting or repricing is a new signature, never a transaction.
How a protected purchase works
The buyer's wallet builds one transaction per item that pays the seller, delivers the inscription to the buyer on the same sats it entered on, pays the marketplace fee and the miner, and carries the seller's passthrough underneath it as its parent. The buyer signs only their own inputs, in one prompt for the whole basket. Ordinals Wallet adds its co-signature at the moment of broadcast and never before, so no completed sale exists anywhere until the buyer has actually sent it.
What protects you
The co-signer key is pinned in the app
Your wallet refuses any listing or purchase whose escrow does not use the key built into the app, so a compromised server cannot substitute its own.
Everything is verified before you sign
The app rebuilds the escrow from your key, checks that the templates pay you exactly the listed price, and checks every output of a purchase before the wallet prompt opens.
Our key alone can move nothing
A stolen co-signer key could only complete sales at the listed prices, which pay the sellers. It cannot redirect an inscription or change a price.
You always have an exit
Listed inscriptions never leave your wallet until a sale is broadcast. One that ever ends up in an escrow without a sale returns to you alone after 144 blocks (about a day), with no help from anyone.
Payment and delivery are one package
The sale and the passthrough travel together, so either both confirm or neither does. A buyer cannot pay without receiving; a seller cannot lose an inscription without being paid.
Ordinal theory is preserved
The inscription lands in the buyer's wallet on the same sat offset it had, wherever it sat inside the UTXO.
Costs
- Seller
- Nothing. One wallet prompt per batch, no transaction, no minimum beyond dust.
- Buyer
- The price, the marketplace fee, any royalty, and the miner fee for the sale plus its passthrough, at the rate you choose.
- Ordinals Wallet
- No capital, no custody, one key that cannot steal.
Questions
Does listing with snipe protection cost anything or move my inscription?
No. Listing is one wallet prompt and no transaction. Your inscription stays in your wallet until it sells. Relisting, repricing and delisting are also free and off-chain.
What if Ordinals Wallet disappears?
Listed inscriptions never left your wallet until a sale was broadcast, so nothing changes. If an inscription is ever sitting in an escrow without a completed sale, you alone can move it back 144 blocks (about a day) after the escrow confirms.
Why does a protected buy need two UTXOs in my wallet?
The sale keeps every inscription on exactly the sats it arrived on, which requires funding on both sides of the inscription in the transaction. Any number of UTXOs can fund each side, and if your wallet cannot be split that way the app builds a small setup transaction and you sign it in the same prompt.
Can I buy several protected items at once?
Yes, up to 12 per purchase. Each item settles as its own transaction, chained so that one wallet prompt covers all of them.
Which wallets support it?
Ordinals Wallet, UniSat, OKX, OYL, TAP, Xverse, Phantom and Leather for buying. Listing needs the wallet to sign a Taproot script path, which the same wallets support.