orgchain/SPEC.md

lineage/v0

lineage/v0 is an ordinals metaprotocol for lineage holdings: LLCs, the orgs and agents they birth, the belts and decisions on their record, and the items they make. Every event is an inscription. The chain orders the events and proves who was allowed to make each one; the state (the trees) is stored nowhere, and every indexer that applies these rules to the same inscriptions gets the same trees.

Status: test networks only (Orgchain's in-browser chain and Bitcoin Core regtest). The reference implementation is reduce() in src/orgchain/lineage.js; src/indexer/ord.js and bin/lineage-index.mjs run it over a real ord index.

1. Inscriptions

lineage/v0 uses these fields of the ord envelope (inscriptions):

tag	field	use
7	metaprotocol	exactly lineage/v0; inscriptions without it are not lineage's
5	metadata	a CBOR map: op and its fields (section 4), strings except a keyring's proof map, in 520-byte pushes (Orgchain keeps it under 2048 bytes)
3	parent	the inscription id of the node that authorizes the event; exactly one, except for found
1	content type	text/plain;charset=utf-8; the body is a short label such as birth time (a keyring's is its statement), ignored by the rules
2	pointer	puts a child's inscription in its own output when the parent is spent first

The body, delegate (tag 11) and properties (tag 17) carry no meaning here; properties may later carry display traits such as a belt's colour, never authority. Unknown odd tags are ignored. Never use unknown even tags: ord treats such an inscription as unbound, so it has no location.

A reveal is a script-path spend whose tapleaf commits to the envelope script's exact bytes (BIP-341). Orgchain's reveals before v1.9 committed to a re-encoded script; real Bitcoin rejects those, and Orgchain's local chain still loads them.

2. Order

Events fold in chain order: block height, then transaction order in the block, then envelope order in the transaction. ord's inscription numbers follow the same order. Unconfirmed events are provisional, and ord indexes none.

Within a block, the miner sets the order. Events that share an authority are chained, because each one spends that authority's inscription, so their order is fixed. Independent events may land in any order, and outside the conflicts in section 6 that changes nothing.

3. Nodes and authority

A node is created by an accepted found (a holding) or birth (an org or an agent), and its id is that event's inscription id. Each node has a kind (holding, org or agent), a status (active or closed), and, below a holding, an edge: derived (the parent holds the child's seed) or adopted (it graduated and holds its own root). A child's index counts its parent's earlier children of the same kind, orgs and agents separately, and is never reused.

An event's parent is the node that authorizes it, and it counts only if the inscribing transaction spends that node's inscription: ord records a parent only then (provenance). Indexers use ord's recorded parents, never the raw tag. So acting for a node means holding its inscription, and moving the inscription moves the authority.

4. Events

op	parent	metadata	effect
found	none	name	a holding; no active holding may already have that name
birth	an active holding, org or graduated agent	name, kind (org or agent, default org)	a child; the parent may not already have an active child of that name
award	an active holding, org or graduated agent	to, skill, belt (white, green or black)	to (any other active node, in any holding) holds that belt in that skill, replacing its earlier belt in it
decide	an active node	title (required), why (optional)	a decision on the node's record
make	an active node	name, note (optional)	an item, made and first held by the node; a node makes one item per name
keyring	the node itself, active	taproot, segwit, nostr, ethereum, and proof: each key's signature	the node's keys are bound to it, replacing its earlier keyring (section 8)
charter	the node itself, active; for a series, its master	form; jurisdiction, legal, provider and filing, or of for a series	the node's legal form, replacing its earlier charter (section 5)
graduate	the child's parent, active	of (an active child, org or agent, not yet adopted)	the edge becomes adopted, and the child becomes a holding of its own (section 5)
close	the node itself, active	none	the node closes, with every active derived descendant; adopted ones stay open

Names (holdings, children, skills, items) are 1 to 40 lowercase letters, digits or hyphens, starting and ending with a letter or digit, because they become domains. Text fields are trimmed, and only their first characters count: 140 for a title, 400 for a why, 280 for a note, 120 for a legal name. Agents birth and award only once they graduate. An event that breaks a rule is rejected: it stays on the chain and changes nothing. Any other op is rejected.

5. Holdings, graduation and charters

A holding is a root: a found, or a child that graduated. When an org graduates, it and its descendants still in the old holding re-root under it, and it joins the holdings. An agent can graduate too: it goes independent, and as a holding of its own it can birth and award. A graduate's parent stays its parent, so where it came from stays on the record, and its old holding's tree keeps a row for it. A graduation event belongs to both holdings. Its keys change with its new root, and so do its derived descendants', so their keyrings retire (section 8).

In Orgchain a graduation is followed by a handoff: the graduate's fresh root claims its inscription, and the derived key that held it countersigns. After that, only the new root can act for it.

A charter records a node's legal form: what it is off chain. Legal form is an attribute, not an identity, so a node keeps its inscription, history and keys whatever form it takes, and the newest charter counts.

form	what it is	who may take it	chartered by
sole	a person trading under their own name	a holding or an agent	the node
llc	a company of its own (for a derived org, one its parent's line controls)	a holding, an org or a graduated agent	the node
series-llc	an LLC that can hold series	a holding, an org or a graduated agent	the node
series	a cell of an ancestor's series LLC	an org	that ancestor, its master
corp	a corporation	a holding, an org or a graduated agent	the node

jurisdiction is an ISO 3166 code such as US-WY, required for an LLC, a series LLC or a corporation and optional for a sole proprietor; a series takes its master's. legal is the legal name, provider the name of whoever formed it (by the name rule), and filing the SHA-256 of the filed documents, in hex: metadata is public, so a charter carries a hash, never the documents. A series charter names the series in of; its master must be an ancestor whose charter is a series LLC at the time.

Whether a charter stands is read off the tree as it is, not stored: a charter stands while its node is active, and a series also needs its master active, still a series LLC, and in the same holding as the series. A series that graduates, or whose master closes or stops holding series, lapses. Because standing is derived, a charter and a graduation in the same block land the same way in either order. Control follows the inscription, whatever the form.

6. Order-sensitive conflicts

Where independent events conflict within one block, the block's order decides. These are the cases: a close and an act by one of its derived descendants; an award and its recipient's close; two foundings with the same name; a keyring and a graduation or close that retires it; two keyrings that list the same key. Orgchain keeps a keyring and the graduation that would retire it a block apart.

7. Ownership, items and deals

Whoever controls the output that holds an inscription's sat holds that node or item; for indexers that is ord's satpoint. Items move like any inscription. A deal is not an event: it is one transaction that carries the item and the buyer's coins in, and the item to the buyer, the price to the holder and the buyer's change out. The buyer signs its inputs first (SIGHASH_ALL) and the holder countersigns the item's. ord sees the item move, and nothing else needs indexing.

8. Keys and keyrings

Indexers need no keys to fold the trees. Keys say where a node's inscription is expected to live, and who can sign for it. Each holding has a 24-word root (BIP-39), and an org's seed is BIP-85 from its parent's (m/83696968'/39'/0'/24'/i') until it graduates. An org is account 0 of its seed and its agents are accounts 1 to n. Each account holds its inscription at its BIP-86 Taproot address (m/86'/coin'/account'/0/0), keeps its money at BIP-84 SegWit, and has a NIP-06 npub (m/44'/1237'/account'/0/0) and an Ethereum address (m/44'/60'/account'/0/0). An org's Ethereum key, at account 0, is its legal-control key: the one that holds its entity NFT.

A keyring publishes a node's keys, so other chains and registries can find them without deriving anything. Its parent is the node itself. Its metadata lists four keys, each written the way its chain writes it, and a proof from each:

field	key	proof, in proof under the same name
taproot	the Taproot address that holds the node's inscription, lowercase	a BIP-322 simple signature, base64
segwit	its P2WPKH address, lowercase, on the same network	a BIP-322 simple signature, base64
nostr	its npub	the BIP-340 signature, in hex, of the NIP-01 event {pubkey, created_at: 0, kind: 1, tags: [], content: statement}
ethereum	its address, in EIP-55 case	an EIP-191 personal_sign signature: 0x, then r, s and v in hex

Every proof signs the same statement, one line each:

lineage/v0 keyring
node: <the node's inscription id>
taproot: <address>
segwit: <address>
nostr: <npub>
ethereum: <address>

The lines are joined by a line feed, with none after the last. Each key signs the way its own wallets sign a message, so any wallet can make a proof and any library can check one. A Taproot proof is a 64-byte signature (SIGHASH_DEFAULT) or a 65-byte one ending in SIGHASH_ALL; a P2WPKH proof is a low-S DER signature with SIGHASH_ALL and the compressed key. The inscription's body is the statement, for people to read; the rules rebuild it from the metadata.

A keyring is rejected unless every key is well formed and every proof checks out. While a node's keyring stands, its keys are bound to that node, and a keyring that lists a key bound to another node is rejected; a key binds once, whatever network it is written for. A node's newer keyring replaces its older one and frees the keys it no longer lists. A graduation retires the keyrings of the graduate and its derived descendants, since their keys change with the new root, and a close retires the keyrings of the nodes it closes. A retired keyring binds nothing, so the node publishes a new one.

Lineage's key tree page also makes an agent's keyring as a nostr event (kind 30078, d = lineage/keyring/v0), signed by its npub and listing its leaves too. The inscription is the chain's record, with a proof from every key.

9. Versions and other chains

Tag 7 carries the version. A new version is a new string with its own rules, which v0 indexers ignore. The events and the rules are chain-agnostic. What another chain must supply is its own proof of order and of authority (a signature by the node's key where nothing is spent). Each holding's events would live on one home chain, and its nodes' keyrings (section 8) bind their keys on the others. Another chain's key joins the keyring in a new version, proven the way that chain's own wallets sign a message.

10. Conformance

tools/regtest rehearses Orgchain's sample on Bitcoin Core regtest, byte for byte, keyrings included, and bin/lineage-index.mjs --compare checks that ord and the lab tell the same story: the same events in the same beats, the same metadata and parents, the same trees and keyrings, and every inscription in the same output. tests/indexer.test.js replays a recorded run. tests/keyring.test.js checks the proofs against BIP-322's published vectors, the key tree page's Ethereum vector, and values cross-checked with bip322-js, ethers and nostr-tools.