Are ordinals simply serial numbers connected to particular satoshis?
As I perceive it sure. The serial numbers are assigned to transaction outputs.
As I perceive it, when an output is spent in a later transaction, the serial quantity task algorithm successfully transfers the serial quantity from every enter to the following sequential output. See draft BIP
When satoshis are spent in a transaction, the enter satoshi
ordinal numbers are assigned to output satoshis utilizing a easy
first-in-first-out algorithm.
Notice that usually there isn’t any assured correspondence of this type in Bitcoin transactions. I imagine many (most? all?) wallets intentionally scramble the order of outputs for higher privateness.
Does this not have an effect on the fungibility of sats?
No, as a result of, as I perceive it, the switch of this serial quantity from one UTXO to a different is bigoted for any transaction created by regular wallets
By regular wallets I imply wallets apart from the precise pockets used for the aim of assigning these explicit serial numbers to satoshis and transferring them.
If, for instance, one Bitcoin transaction combines a cost from A to B with an unrelated cost from P to Q, the serial variety of A would possibly switch to P to not B. So the fungibility for regular digital money functions must be unaffected. Regular bitcoin use produces many such transactions from mixers, coinjoins, trade batching, and so on.
Even within the easiest regular transaction with one enter, a cost output and a change output, the serial quantity may be assigned to the recipient quantity or to the sender’s returned change.
The switch of the serial quantity doesn’t essentially correspond to any underlying real-world transaction and sometimes will not.
The exception is after all transactions created by the particular pockets whose goal is to rigorously order transaction outputs to particularly correspond with the mission’s algorithm’s guidelines for transfers of this serial quantity. For this explicit pockets, the goal is non-fungibility of any related token – although they declare the fungibility of the related cash is unaffected – which I think would solely be true when that cash is spent in a standard pockets.
are the assorted recordsdata (e.g. pictures) that at the moment are linked to sure satoshis (via this ordinal system?) truly current within the witness knowledge that I retailer when working my node?
Sure, the photographs (and different objects) listed in ordinals.com/inscriptions are saved in each full Bitcoin node. See feedback and addendum to Comply with-up to Segwit: Arbitrary knowledge storage in witness?
Footnote: I’m not very acquainted with this mission so the above may be mistaken in some vital facet. What I wrote appears to make sense to me.
