# counters.gallery

Bitcoin Counters explorer: numbered inscriptions in Bitcoin witness data, owned through Counterparty assets.

URL: https://blockspace.wiki/projects/counters.gallery/

Status: live
Site: https://counters.gallery
Source: https://github.com/BitcoinCounters/counters

## What it is

counters.gallery is the explorer for Bitcoin [Counters](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counter/). In its
own words: "Explore Bitcoin Counters: numbered inscriptions stored in
Bitcoin witness data and owned through Counterparty assets, numbered from
zero." A counter is "a numbered file event": a file committed permanently
to Bitcoin as the description of an [XCP asset](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/xcp-asset/), carried in a
[Counterparty taproot envelope](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/taproot-envelope/). [Counterparty](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counterparty/) carries identity,
ownership, naming, transfer and the content itself; the counters protocol
only says which events qualify and how they are numbered.

## Status

Live at https://counters.gallery (as of 2026-10-20). Its status endpoint
reports version 11.5.0; counters versions name the Counterparty Core
release they target.

## How it works

The `counters` tool indexes, mints, transfers and serves. For each block
from 902,000 it fetches the block's issuances and [fairminter](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/fairminter/) deploys
from Counterparty Core, keeps valid ones with a non-empty description and
drops rows Core derives on its own, checks that the transaction is a
taproot [reveal transaction](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/reveal-transaction/), then numbers the survivors in order and
stores the content. It never reimplements Counterparty consensus, and it
never advances past Counterparty's parsed height. The explorer and a
read-only JSON API serve the index under fixed rendering rules: only
on-chain files are shown, a [pointer counter](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/pointer-counter/) is shown as text, HTML and
SVG run sandboxed, and a [reinscription](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/reinscription/) adds a new counter to the same
asset. A [counterparty + ord](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counterparty-plus-ord/) counter is also an ordinals
[inscription](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/inscription/). The market layer over this index is
[counters.fun](/projects/counters.fun/). The project also includes counters-proto, the older v2
protocol with its own `COUNT` envelope; its counters do not qualify under
v3.

## Key figures

- 554 counters, indexed to block 972,303 (https://counters.gallery/status,
  read 2026-10-20).
- In the rendering audit of counters #0 to #86 (2026-07-17), 46 of the 87
  were pointers, 19 text, 11 images, 3 audio, 4 HTML and 6 decoded stamps.

## Glossary

- **counter**: A Bitcoin Counter is "a numbered file event": a file committed to Bitcoin as the description of a [Counterparty](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counterparty/) asset, carried in a [Counterparty taproot envelope](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/taproot-envelope/), and given a global, gap-free number in order of creation, from #0. It passes two tests at once: the bytes are the description of a valid Counterparty issuance or [fairminter](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/fairminter/) deploy, and they reached the chain inside [witness data](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/witness/). Either test alone is nothing.
- **Counterparty**: The protocol whose assets carry [counters](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counter/). For counters it supplies identity, ownership, naming, transfer and, since its v11 [taproot envelope](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/taproot-envelope/), the content itself. Counterparty Core is its node software. It decides message validity, asset identity, ownership and content; the counters indexer never reimplements that consensus. ("Bitcoin Core" is the separate Bitcoin node; the counters docs always name the two in full.)
- **counterparty + ord**: The style of [Counterparty taproot envelope](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/taproot-envelope/) that Counterparty Core emits with `inscription=true`: the same envelope plus the ordinals framing, with every field an official ordinals tag and tag 7 carrying `xcp`. Its reveal creates two independently ownable assets: the Counterparty asset, and an ordinals [inscription](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/inscription/) on its own output. The stored value is `counterparty/ord`. The first five [counters](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counter/) are all this style.
- **Counterparty DEX**: Counterparty's on-chain order book. An order gives one asset to get another, with BTC allowed on either side; a non-BTC give is escrowed until the order fills, expires or is cancelled, and a matched BTC leg must be paid within about 20 blocks. Counterparty has one trade message, and consensus alone decides whether it fills against the book or a [liquidity pool](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/liquidity-pool/).
- **Counterparty taproot envelope**: Counterparty v11's witness-data encoding, active from block 902,000: an `OP_FALSE OP_IF … OP_ENDIF` tapscript revealed by a commit and [reveal transaction](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/reveal-transaction/) pair. The message, an asset's description included, travels as data pushes in the reveal's input-0 [witness](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/witness/); the output side holds only the literal `CNTRPRTY` OP_RETURN marker. Two styles exist, the size-optimised counterparty native envelope and the [counterparty + ord](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counterparty-plus-ord/) envelope, and both carry [counters](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counter/) equally.
- **dispenser**: A Counterparty offer that escrows an asset and vends it for BTC at a price per lot that cannot change while it is open. A purchase needs a Counterparty dispense message: since block 866,000 a bare BTC payment to a dispenser address buys nothing. A closed dispenser keeps vending for about 5 blocks, then the unsold stock returns to the closer.
- **envelope**: A data carrier inside a taproot script-path witness, holding content as pushes of at most 520 bytes each. ord's envelope carries the marker `6f7264`; Counterparty and Counters have envelopes of their own.
- **fairminter**: A Counterparty message that deploys a fair-minted asset. A fairminter deploy whose description is a file is itself a [counter](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counter/); the fairmints that follow never are, so "a fair-minted collection gets one counter at deploy". Since Counterparty Core v11.2's `fairmint_pool` gate (mainnet block 961,100) a fairminter can seed a [liquidity pool](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/liquidity-pool/) at soft cap with every satoshi it raised, minting the [LP tokens](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/lp-token/) to the unspendable address.
- **liquidity pool**: A constant-product reserve pair on [Counterparty](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counterparty/), with its own [LP token](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/lp-token/), native since Counterparty Core v11.1's `amm_pools` gate. There is no "create pool" message: the first deposit creates the pool, and its two amounts set the opening price. counters.fun lists the [counters](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counter/) that have pools against XCP.
- **LP token**: The token a Counterparty [liquidity pool](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/liquidity-pool/) gives its depositors. Burning LP tokens takes both assets back pro rata. LP tokens sent to the unspendable address lock the liquidity, and counters.fun shows that lock as the share of LP supply at the burn address.
- **pointer counter**: A [counter](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counter/) whose content is a single URI token (`ipfs:`, `ar://`, `http(s)://`) rather than a file. It is a full, valid counter, but only the pointer is on chain. A counters server shows the pointer text and never fetches it; counters.fun does not display pointer counters at all.
- **price per KB**: counters.fun's price against on-chain size: the market cap spread over the bytes the asset carries on chain, summed over every [counter](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counter/) on it, so price × circulating supply ÷ KB, in the price's own unit. Every pooled card, dispenser card and DEX row on counters.fun shows it.
- **reinscription**: New content attached to a [Counterparty](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counterparty/) asset you own: a Counterparty reissuance with a fresh taproot-carried description (quantity 0, on counters.fun's mint page). It is numbered like any other [counter](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counter/). Numbering is per event, so an unlocked asset collects a new counter each time; its lowest-numbered counter is its original, and no earlier counter is erased.
- **reveal transaction**: In a Counterparty taproot mint, the commit transaction pays to a taproot address committing to the envelope tapscript. The reveal transaction spends that output by the script path, exposing the envelope in input 0's witness, and carries an OP_RETURN holding only the literal marker `CNTRPRTY`. The reveal is the transaction Counterparty parses and the one a [counter](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counter/) is keyed to. An unrevealed commit is nothing.
- **rolling hash**: How independent counters indexers check that they agree. Each [counter](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counter/) extends a SHA-256 chain over its number, transaction, position, kind, asset and content hash, seeded from the tag `counters:v3:bitcoin-mainnet:902000`. Two indexers agree on the whole history if and only if their latest rolling hash matches. It is not BTI's [consensus hash](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/consensus-hash/).
- **witness**: The segwit section of a transaction (BIP 141/144) holding one stack per input. It is hashed into the wtxid but not the txid, and each of its bytes weighs 1 WU instead of 4.
- **XCP asset**: An asset in the [Counterparty](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counterparty/) ledger. BTI's token catalogue calls XCP assets "the first blockspace tokens (2014)", counts XCP itself as one, and lists [counters](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counter/) as a subset. An asset's description can hold a file; when it reaches the chain in a [Counterparty taproot envelope](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/taproot-envelope/), that description is a counter. On counters.fun's mint page, a named asset burns 0.5 XCP.

## FAQ

### What is a counter?

A [counter](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counter/) is a file committed to Bitcoin as the description of a [Counterparty](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/counterparty/) asset, carried in [witness data](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/witness/) by a [Counterparty taproot envelope](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/taproot-envelope/), and numbered gap-free in order of creation from #0.

### Why do counters start at block 902,000?

That is where Counterparty's taproot encoding activated. Before it, an asset description could not reach the chain in witness data, so no counter could exist. Counter #0, XDUALS, came five blocks later, at 902,005.

### Does the explorer show files hosted somewhere else?

No. A counters server only shows on-chain files. A [pointer counter](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/pointer-counter/) is shown as its pointer text and never fetched, and HTML and SVG run sandboxed.

### Can a counter's number change?

Numbers are append-only, but numbers near the tip are provisional until confirmations pass, because a reorg rolls back and re-numbers identically. Amendment A1 (2026-09-24) removed one derived event, #163, and every later counter moved down by one.

### How can two explorers be sure they agree?

Each counter extends a [rolling hash](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/rolling-hash/). Two indexers agree on the whole history if and only if their latest rolling hash matches.

Sources:

- The project list at block.space/projects · https://block.space/projects
- Bitcoin Counters v3, indexer and wallet: README (BitcoinCounters/counters) · https://github.com/BitcoinCounters/counters
- Bitcoin Counters build reference v3 · https://github.com/BitcoinCounters/counters/blob/HEAD/docs/build-reference-v3.md
- Counters server: rendering rules · https://github.com/BitcoinCounters/counters/blob/HEAD/docs/rules.md
- Counters notes · https://github.com/BitcoinCounters/counters/blob/HEAD/docs/notes.md
- The counters server /status (the index behind counters.gallery) · https://counters.gallery/status
- Blockspace Holdings records

Updated: 2026-10-20