Payment and Inscribing
Once your collection is complete, you have two options as to how you inscribe your collection:
Inscribe with GeneratOrd: You can inscribe your entire collection with GeneratOrd with just a few clicks (See Inscribing with GeneratOrd). If doing this, you can choose to inscribe the entire collection into a single address, or you can send each inscription to a different address (e.g. airdrop).
Download and Inscribe yourself or with a 3rd party: If you would prefer to inscribe some other way, you can do that too. You will still have to inscribe a couple of inscriptions through GeneratOrd to setup the collection, but the actual images of the collection can be downloaded and inscribed however you like (See Download and Inscribe without GeneratOrd). The most common reason to do this is because you are launching with an 'inscribe on demand' launchpad, such as Ordzaar or Gamma. You may also choose to do this if you have special requirements for you inscriptions that are not supported by GeneratOrd, such as Parent-Child, or inscribing on rare/exotic sats.
Prepayment Checklist
However you choose to inscribe, it cannot be undone, so you want to be 100% sure that your collection is ready. Here are a few things to do before inscribing to make sure you are ready.
If your art is pIxel art, make sure to turn on the Pixel Art setting in the Settings Tab. For more details see here.
Make sure your traits are inscribed. See Inscribing your Traits for more details, but long story short, your collection will not render properly until all your traits are inscribed and confirmed, so it is a good idea to have this done early. If you are inscribing the collection with GeneratOrd, this isn't strictly necessary (GeneratOrd will automatically inscribe any uninscribed traits when you inscribe the collection), but we still highly recommend it. If you are inscribing without GeneratOrd, then you will be forced to inscribe your traits before making your payment.
Look through every image in the preview shown in the Collection Tab. It's easy to make mistakes when generating your collection, especially when you have complex requirements. It's not uncommon to discover that certain traits don't work well together, only after generating the collection. So it's important to have a look through every image to make sure there are no mistakes.
Try turning off Quick Load to verify there are no unexpected issues. See Quick Load for more details. Turning off quick load will show the images as a full simulation of the inscriptions (instead of just images), so it is good to double check this works as expected before inscribing. This also gives you an idea of how long your inscriptions will take to load on explorers.
If you are inscribing the collection with GeneratOrd, we recommend you have a launchpad locked in who supports a preinscribed collection (e.g. Magic Eden). See the note below about preinscribed collections. This is important, as you don't want to end up with the entire collection in your wallet with no way to distribute them.
Download and Inscribe without GeneratOrd
GeneratOrd's inscription capabilities are limited, so it is common to choose to download inscriptions and inscribe through a third party, or even inscribing it yourself. Reasons to do this include:
Using an 'inscribe on demand' launchpads like Ordzaar or Gamma. These kinds of launchpads work by inscribing each item in the same transaction where minters pay. This means that the collection is not inscribed before launch, instead it is inscribed progressively as your collection mints out. This lowers costs for creators, as they don't have to pay to inscribe their collection (they do still have to pay to inscribe their traits though). If you choose to do this, you will need to download the collection and provide the files to the launchpad for them to inscribe.
Inscribing your collection using Parent Child.
Inscribing your collection on rare or exotic sats.
To download your collection for inscription, navigate to the Inscribe Tab and click Download. You will see the page below, and will have to pay the service fee. This is the fee for creating the recursive code and files needed to create your collection. It does not include inscription costs.
Before paying, make sure you have checked the Prepayment Checklist above. You will not be able to edit your collection after payment, so you need to be certain that nothing will need to be changed or fixed.
If you choose a custom fee rate, be careful not to set it too low. You will not have access to download your files until your payment is confirmed. If you set a low fee rate you may have to wait longer before gaining access to the files, and if your payment gets stuck in the mempool indefinitely, you may never get access to your collection.
We recommend no editing the fee rate for this payment. The network fee will likely be quite small anyway.
For more information about fee rates see Fee Rate.
After you have paid, you will be prompted to complete a 3 step process as shown below. If you have changed your mind, and want to inscribe your collection through GeneratOrd, you can click the Inscribe All button, which will inscribe all three steps in one go. This will inscribe your entire collection, so only do this if you want your collection inscribed.
Each step consists of inscribing a different file. The 3 steps must be completed in order. You do not need to know what the Metadata and Config files, so if you just want to know how to download your collection skip down to How to download your collection.
But if your are interested, here is a brief description of each file. For more details about how these files are used see How does GeneratOrd work?
Metadata: This is the raw data that describes your entire collection. More specifically, it contains the inscription ID's of all of your traits, and contains information about which traits are in each item of your collection.
Config: This is a Javascript file that contains basic configuration for your collection. It contains information such as: the inscription id of the metadata inscription, the resolution to render the images at, whether the images are pixel art or not, etc. This can also be edited to achieve more advanced functionality, however we do not recommend doing this unless you know what you are doing.
Collection: This is your actual collection. It consists of a single HTML file for each item in your collection, and when inscribed each HTML file will display one item in your collection.
How to download your collection
At each step, you have to inscribe a different file. It is easiest to just click the green Inscribe button for each step, however you can also download the file and inscribe it yourself if you prefer. When inscribing, you will be presented with a payment form. See Inscribing for more details about this form.
When inscribing the Metadata and Config inscriptions (Step 1 and 2), it does not matter what you put for the destination address. The destination address is the address these inscriptions are sent to. The recursion will work perfectly fine regardless of where these are sent to (it will even still work if these inscriptions are burned).
So you can sent it to any address that is convenient for you. It is common to put these in the same address that your traits are.
For the first step, simply click the green Inscribe button in the box labelled Step 1. Metadata. Alternatively, you can download the metadata and inscribe yourself, but you should only do this if you have a reason to. If you are not sure, just inscribe through GeneratOrd by clicking Inscribe.
For the second step, again, just click the green Inscribe button in the box labelled Step 2. Config. If you chose to download the metadata and inscribe it yourself in step 1, then you will need to enter the inscription ID from that into the text field for Step 2. Again, you can also choose to download the config file and inscribe it yourself, but you should only do this if you have a reason to. If you are not sure, just inscribe through GeneratOrd by clicking Inscribe.
Finally, for third step, you can now download your collection by clicking the blue Download button in the box labelled Step 3. Collection. When you download this, you will get a zip file, which you need to unzip. It will contain a folder containing many HTML files. These are the files that need to be inscribed to create your collection. Again, if you chose to download the config and inscribe it yourself in Step 2, then you will need to enter the inscription ID from that into the text field for Step 3. If you have changed your mind, and want to inscribe your collection through GeneratOrd, you can still do this by clicking the green Inscribe button in Step 3, or by clicking Inscribe All in the top right corner.
If you are using an inscribe on launchpad such as Ordzaar or Gamma, you will need to provide the HTML files you downloaded in Step 3 to them.
If you open one of the HTML files from Step 3 in a browser such as Chrome, you will find it won't display anything. This is because they only work after they are inscribed.
If you want to test that the inscriptions are all working correctly, you can still do that using an inscription preview tool created by @lifofifo.
To do this, open up one of your HTML files using a text editor and copy the contents. It will look something like this:
Then, open up this link to the ordinals previewer, and paste the contents of the HTML file into it. Click Preview Inscription, and you should see the image that is created by that HTML file.
You can repeat the process with other HTML files to see other images to.
Note: The preview will only work if all your previous inscriptions are confirmed.
Inscribing with Generatord
Inscribing your entire collection through GeneratOrd is very simple, and can be done with just a few clicks. If you wish to inscribe your collection with GeneratOrd, simply navigate to the Inscribe Tab and you will see the page in the screenshot below. This will inscribe everything needed for your collection all at once. i.e. it will inscribe steps 1, 2, and 3 as described here. The total cost of inscribing this way is identical to if you follow the steps above, the only difference is that you are paying it all in one go here. For more details about this inscribing form, see Inscribing.
If you choose to inscribe with GeneratOrd, it is important you have a distribution plan.
Most ordinals launchpads (e.g. Ordzaar, Gamma, etc.) operate with an 'inscribe on demand' model, meaning you provide them with the files to inscribe, and the files are inscribed as the users mint the items (i.e. the users inscribe the collection, not you).
There are very few launchpads that launch preinscribed collections. Magic Eden is the most popular, however they don't accept many projects.
We recommend you have a launchpad locked in before you inscribe through GeneratOrd, and make sure they can launch with preinscribed assets.
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