File Size and Cost Savings

Find out how much you save by using BitGen

Assuming a 10k collection with 10 trait types and 10 traits within each type, we get the file sizes as indicated in the table below:

File	# to Inscribe	File Size	Total File Size
Renderer JS	1	1.1KB	1.1KB
Collection JS	1	1.5KB	1.5KB
Collection JSON	1	2.3KB	2.3KB
Asset Layer IMAGES	100	0.4KB	40KB
Inscription HTML	10000	0.12KB	1200KB
Provenance JSON	1	0.18KB	0.18KB
TOTAL			~1.25MB

This means you could inscribe an entire 10k collection using the BitGen standard in about 1.25MB.

If you were to inscribe this collection without the BitGen standard, it would be about 25MB, which means BitGen gives you a 20x improvement in file size and inscription costs.

BitGen Improvement Caveats

The 20x listed above is the maximum improvement we could theoretically expect to see from BitGen. The actual BitGen improvement when inscribing on Bitcoin is going to be less than this because of Bitcoin transaction overhead.

Every inscription has around 300vb of overhead associated with it. The simplest way to think about this is it adds 1.2KB to every inscription. This would mean that your total file size to inscribe using BitGen (including the txn overhead) is 13.25MB compared to 37MB without BitGen, resulting in a 2.8x improvement in inscription costs or 36% of the total costs of inscribing without BitGen. This is the minimum improvement we could expect to see.

As file sizes increase, the difference is more pronounced. 2.8x is the minimum improvement you could theoretically expect, and 20x is the maximum improvement you could theoretically expect. As asset file size increases, you get an increase in improvement.

Another fun way to think about BitGen is that each inscription in the collection is only 5% bigger than inscribing a BRC-20 (when accounting for transaction overhead). This is incredible because you can inscribe high quality art at about the same cost as inscribing BRC-20s.