The Biggest Bitcoin Ordinal Transactions Ever
It's the Superbowl ring, the Grammy, the Heavyweight Championship belt. The ultimate flex is filling up a whole block with 1 massive Inscription transaction, and there's only 4 members of the 4megger Pantheon.
Kings of the big Bitcoin Blocks
It's the Superbowl ring, the Grammy, the Heavyweight Championship belt. The ultimate flex is filling up a whole block with 1 massive Inscription transaction, and there's only 4 members of the 4megger Pantheon.
What is a "4megger"?
Casey Rodarmor, creator of Ordinal Theory, says the term "4megger" arose out of conversations when he & early collaborators removed the 400kb transaction limit to the newly released ord client. Inscriptions over that 400kb limit would be "4meggers" and take up almost the entirety of Bitcoin's 4mb blocksize. The iconic first 4megger, the Taproot Wizard's "Big Wizard", was "ripped" on February 1, mined by us here at Luxor and we haven't looked back since.
How is a 4megger made?
A 4megger is a valid Bitcoin transaction, but because it is not a typical transaction there are multiple barriers to it being included in a block, such as most mempool's policy/Bitcoin Core's standardness rules. Additionally, it's unclear if pools would produce a block with such a transaction because it's quite outside the normal scope of regular operations and pools are usually competing on efficiency.
So the solution is to create an "out-of-band" transaction, where the pool's compensation for the transaction happens outside the transaction itself. Typically this is either a direct payment off-chain (wire, check, etc) or an additional Bitcoin transaction some other agreed upon time. Normally, pools simply choose the most profitable transactions to include into a block and send it off, but out-of-band transactions allow for more bespoke deals such as "ripping 4meggers". To date, all 4meggers have been out-of-band.
The Big Wizard - 774,628, Luxor
The iconic Taproot Wizard #1 was ripped in block 774,628 by the Taproot Wizards project and immediately become one of the most iconic events in Bitcoin's history. Taproot Wizards creators Eric Wall & Udi Wertheimer worked with Luxor CEO Nick Hansen to pioneer the unique transaction. As Nick explains on the Castle Island Podcast, they ran the transaction on regtest multiple times to ensure it wouldn't fail, placed the transaction in Luxor Pool's own mempool, and produced the block. Notably, the Taproot Wizard was a 0 fee transaction, which would otherwise be an invalid transaction if not placed in the block by the pool/block producer itself.
ScrillaVentura - 776,884, TerraPool
ScrillaVentura's Rodarmor-overdubbed song was the 2nd 4megger. Ripped in collaboration with Rocktoshi, this Inscription is notably one of the rare audio clips on Bitcoin and features music by artist ScrillaVentura with overdubbed clips of Casey Rodarmor talking about Ordinal Theory. Block 776,884 was mined by TerraPool, a "green energy mining" pool that Luxor works with.
Bitcoin War Bonds - 777,945, TerraPool
Bitcoin War Bonds is an art piece by Bitcoin "Artist in Residence" Tommy. Tommy credits wildmanworld for helping him through the process. A large physical version of the art also exists (I believe it's at Bitcoin Park - Charlie).
BTCMagazine May Edition - 786,501, TerraPool
The largest block in Bitcoin's history to-date. This Bitcoin Magazine May edition features Julian Assange on the cover. This 4megger rips on the heels of Bitcoin Magazine's auction of it's historic covers of early prints. OrdinalHub Engineer Psifour calls it "the most beautiful block I've ever seen".
The 4megger club currently only consists of 4 members (poetic), but as Inscription activity continues we expect to see many more. However these 4 so far have earned their place in history.