Parent-Child Inscriptions Explained

A parent-child inscription is a way to link inscriptions together on Bitcoin. A parent inscription is the main item (like a collection), and child inscriptions belong to it (like items in that collection). It's similar to how a folder contains files.

Parent-child relationships enable:

• •Collections — group related inscriptions under one parent
• •Provenance — prove that a child inscription was created by the parent's owner
• •Hierarchies — build complex structures of related content
• •Game assets — link character items, levels, and metadata to a parent game

This is how most major Ordinals collections organize their items on-chain.

• •Create a parent inscription — this is your collection or root item
• •Create child inscriptions — when inscribing, reference the parent's inscription ID
• •The Bitcoin transaction proving the relationship is recorded on-chain
• •Explorers and marketplaces can then display the parent-child hierarchy

The parent must be in your wallet when you create child inscriptions, proving ownership and authorization.

Imagine you're creating a pixel art collection called "CryptoCritters":

• •Parent: Inscribe the collection metadata (name, description, image)
• •Children: Inscribe each individual CryptoCritter as a child of the parent
• •Each child references the parent inscription ID
• •Marketplaces automatically group all children under the CryptoCritters collection

This creates a verifiable on-chain collection structure.

To create parent-child inscriptions:

• •Inscribe the parent using any standard inscription method
• •Note the parent's inscription ID
• •When inscribing children, include a parent reference in the inscription envelope
• •The child transaction must spend the UTXO containing the parent inscription
• •This proves you own the parent and authorizes the child relationship

Several inscription services support parent-child creation. You can also use our Inscription Creator tool to build the HTML content for your parent inscription.