# Inscription permanence

Research: how often inscribed sats are spent or move, and where they go.

URL: https://blockspace.wiki/research/inscription-permanence/

**Status on [blockspacelabs.com](https://blockspacelabs.com): Research.**

## What it studies

The Labs site asks: "How often inscribed sats are spent or move, and where they go."

An [inscription](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/inscription/) is bound to a single [sat](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/sat/). The inscribed bytes stay on Bitcoin for good, but the sat that carries them moves whenever its output is spent. This study measures how often that happens and where the sats end up. The [sats and ordinals](/concepts/sats-and-ordinals/) page explains how a sat is tracked from output to output.

## The data it will use

"blockspace.to spent sats and the holders appendix's sat moves":

- [blockspace.to](/projects/blockspace.to/), the Labs ord explorer, keeps the sat ranges of spent outputs, its [spent sats](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/spent-sats/) index (see [spent sats](/concepts/spent-sats/));
- [the holders appendix](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/the-appendix/), which keeps holdings up to date block by block, records each move of an inscribed sat from one holder to another.

The card links to https://blockspace.to. It is a descriptive card; no results are claimed.

## Related research

[blockspace.to: spent sats](/research/blockspace-to-spent-sats/) is the Live project the study builds on, and [who holds blockspace](/research/who-holds-blockspace/) the Live project behind the appendix.

Sources:

- The blockspacelabs.com page (index.html) · https://blockspacelabs.com
- Blockspace Holdings records
- ord /status (the blockspace.to ord server) · https://blockspace.to/status

Updated: 2026-10-20