Sat Hunting

Ordinal hunting is difficult but rewarding. The feeling of owning a wallet full of UTXOs, redolent with the scent of rare and exotic sats, is beyond compare.

Ordinals are numbers for satoshis. Every satoshi has an ordinal number and every ordinal number has a satoshi.

Preparation

There are a few things you'll need before you start.

1. First, you'll need a synced Bitcoin Core node with a transaction index. To turn on transaction indexing, pass -txindex on the command-line:

   bitcoind -txindex
   

   Or put the following in your Bitcoin configuration file:

   txindex=1
   

   Launch it and wait for it to catch up to the chain tip, at which point the following command should print out the current block height:

   bitcoin-cli getblockcount
   

2. Second, you'll need a synced ord index.

   • Get a copy of ord from the repo.

   • Run ord --index-sats server. It should connect to your bitcoin core node and start indexing.

   • Once it has finished indexing, leave the server running and submit new ord commands in a separate terminal session.

3. Third, you'll need a wallet with UTXOs that you want to search.

Searching for Rare Ordinals

Searching for Rare Ordinals in a Bitcoin Core Wallet

The ord wallet command is just a wrapper around Bitcoin Core's RPC API, so searching for rare ordinals in a Bitcoin Core wallet is Easy. Assuming your wallet is named foo:

1. Load your wallet:

   bitcoin-cli loadwallet foo
   

2. Display any rare ordinals wallet foo's UTXOs:

   ord --index-sats wallet --name foo sats
   

Searching for Rare Ordinals in a Non-Bitcoin Core Wallet

The ord wallet command is just a wrapper around Bitcoin Core's RPC API, so to search for rare ordinals in a non-Bitcoin Core wallet, you'll need to import your wallet's descriptors into Bitcoin Core.

Descriptors describe the ways that wallets generate private keys and public keys.

You should only import descriptors into Bitcoin Core for your wallet's public keys, not its private keys.

If your wallet's public key descriptor is compromised, an attacker will be able to see your wallet's addresses, but your funds will be safe.

If your wallet's private key descriptor is compromised, an attacker can drain your wallet of funds.

1. Get the wallet descriptor from the wallet whose UTXOs you want to search for rare ordinals. It will look something like this:

   wpkh([bf1dd55e/84'/0'/0']xpub6CcJtWcvFQaMo39ANFi1MyXkEXM8T8ZhnxMtSjQAdPmVSTHYnc8Hwoc11VpuP8cb8JUTboZB5A7YYGDonYySij4XTawL6iNZvmZwdnSEEep/0/*)#csvefu29
   

2. Create a watch-only wallet named foo-watch-only:

   bitcoin-cli createwallet foo-watch-only true true
   

   Feel free to give it a better name than foo-watch-only!

3. Load the foo-watch-only wallet:

   bitcoin-cli loadwallet foo-watch-only
   

4. Import your wallet descriptors into foo-watch-only:

   bitcoin-cli importdescriptors \
     '[{ "desc": "wpkh([bf1dd55e/84h/0h/0h]xpub6CcJtWcvFQaMo39ANFi1MyXkEXM8T8ZhnxMtSjQAdPmVSTHYnc8Hwoc11VpuP8cb8JUTboZB5A7YYGDonYySij4XTawL6iNZvmZwdnSEEep/0/*)#tpnxnxax", "timestamp":0 }]'
   

   If you know the Unix timestamp when your wallet first started receive transactions, you may use it for the value of "timestamp" instead of 0. This will reduce the time it takes for Bitcoin Core to search for your wallet's UTXOs.

5. Check that everything worked:

   bitcoin-cli getwalletinfo
   

6. Display your wallet's rare ordinals:

   ord wallet sats
   

Searching for Rare Ordinals in a Wallet that Exports Multi-path Descriptors

Some descriptors describe multiple paths in one descriptor using angle brackets, e.g., <0;1>. Multi-path descriptors are not yet supported by Bitcoin Core, so you'll first need to convert them into multiple descriptors, and then import those multiple descriptors into Bitcoin Core.

1. First get the multi-path descriptor from your wallet. It will look something like this:

   wpkh([bf1dd55e/84h/0h/0h]xpub6CcJtWcvFQaMo39ANFi1MyXkEXM8T8ZhnxMtSjQAdPmVSTHYnc8Hwoc11VpuP8cb8JUTboZB5A7YYGDonYySij4XTawL6iNZvmZwdnSEEep/<0;1>/*)#fw76ulgt
   

2. Create a descriptor for the receive address path:

   wpkh([bf1dd55e/84'/0'/0']xpub6CcJtWcvFQaMo39ANFi1MyXkEXM8T8ZhnxMtSjQAdPmVSTHYnc8Hwoc11VpuP8cb8JUTboZB5A7YYGDonYySij4XTawL6iNZvmZwdnSEEep/0/*)
   

   And the change address path:

   wpkh([bf1dd55e/84'/0'/0']xpub6CcJtWcvFQaMo39ANFi1MyXkEXM8T8ZhnxMtSjQAdPmVSTHYnc8Hwoc11VpuP8cb8JUTboZB5A7YYGDonYySij4XTawL6iNZvmZwdnSEEep/1/*)
   

3. Get and note the checksum for the receive address descriptor, in this case tpnxnxax:

   bitcoin-cli getdescriptorinfo \
     'wpkh([bf1dd55e/84h/0h/0h]xpub6CcJtWcvFQaMo39ANFi1MyXkEXM8T8ZhnxMtSjQAdPmVSTHYnc8Hwoc11VpuP8cb8JUTboZB5A7YYGDonYySij4XTawL6iNZvmZwdnSEEep/0/*)'
   

   {
     "descriptor": "wpkh([bf1dd55e/84'/0'/0']xpub6CcJtWcvFQaMo39ANFi1MyXkEXM8T8ZhnxMtSjQAdPmVSTHYnc8Hwoc11VpuP8cb8JUTboZB5A7YYGDonYySij4XTawL6iNZvmZwdnSEEep/0/*)#csvefu29",
     "checksum": "tpnxnxax",
     "isrange": true,
     "issolvable": true,
     "hasprivatekeys": false
   }
   

   And for the change address descriptor, in this case 64k8wnd7:

   bitcoin-cli getdescriptorinfo \
     'wpkh([bf1dd55e/84h/0h/0h]xpub6CcJtWcvFQaMo39ANFi1MyXkEXM8T8ZhnxMtSjQAdPmVSTHYnc8Hwoc11VpuP8cb8JUTboZB5A7YYGDonYySij4XTawL6iNZvmZwdnSEEep/1/*)'
   

   {
     "descriptor": "wpkh([bf1dd55e/84'/0'/0']xpub6CcJtWcvFQaMo39ANFi1MyXkEXM8T8ZhnxMtSjQAdPmVSTHYnc8Hwoc11VpuP8cb8JUTboZB5A7YYGDonYySij4XTawL6iNZvmZwdnSEEep/1/*)#fyfc5f6a",
     "checksum": "64k8wnd7",
     "isrange": true,
     "issolvable": true,
     "hasprivatekeys": false
   }
   

4. Load the wallet you want to import the descriptors into:

   bitcoin-cli loadwallet foo-watch-only
   

5. Now import the descriptors, with the correct checksums, into Bitcoin Core.

   bitcoin-cli \
    importdescriptors \
    '[
      {
        "desc": "wpkh([bf1dd55e/84h/0h/0h]xpub6CcJtWcvFQaMo39ANFi1MyXkEXM8T8ZhnxMtSjQAdPmVSTHYnc8Hwoc11VpuP8cb8JUTboZB5A7YYGDonYySij4XTawL6iNZvmZwdnSEEep/0/*)#tpnxnxax"
        "timestamp":0
      },
      {
        "desc": "wpkh([bf1dd55e/84h/0h/0h]xpub6CcJtWcvFQaMo39ANFi1MyXkEXM8T8ZhnxMtSjQAdPmVSTHYnc8Hwoc11VpuP8cb8JUTboZB5A7YYGDonYySij4XTawL6iNZvmZwdnSEEep/1/*)#64k8wnd7",
        "timestamp":0
      }
    ]'
   

   If you know the Unix timestamp when your wallet first started receive transactions, you may use it for the value of the "timestamp" fields instead of 0. This will reduce the time it takes for Bitcoin Core to search for your wallet's UTXOs.

6. Check that everything worked:

   bitcoin-cli getwalletinfo
   

7. Display your wallet's rare ordinals:

   ord wallet sats
   

Exporting Descriptors

Sparrow Wallet

Navigate to the Settings tab, then to Script Policy, and press the edit button to display the descriptor.

Transferring Ordinals

The ord wallet supports transferring specific satoshis by using the name of the satoshi. To send the satoshi zonefruits, do:

ord wallet send <RECEIVING_ADDRESS> zonefruits --fee-rate 21

You can also use the bitcoin-cli commands createrawtransaction, signrawtransactionwithwallet, and sendrawtransaction, but this method can be complex and is outside the scope of this guide.