Shadows

"At the heart of The Shadows lies the intrigue of secret societies and mythical archetypes, drawing inspiration from the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto himself. Our narrative delves into the realm of the 'quantum shadow,' a mysterious and metaphysical force that binds the destiny of our Shadows."

The Shadows are a collection of 666 Ordinals inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain that were publicly auctioned on 1/11/2024. Summoned by the Shadow Hats, each Shadow bares traits that resemble the Shadow Wizard who summoned them. Hailing from The Quantum Shadow, their motivations and purpose are shrouded in mystery.

Lore

Initial lore for the Shadows was released in a series of tweets included artwork from Reilly Brown who also illustrated art for the Comics.

The Quantum Shadow is expanding, the Light is faltering... “The Blue Hats of the Bastion have reported unusual alchemy, transmogrifying water into blood. In the Red City, we see a terrifying storm of hail and fire, and the Green City is bewitched with frogs.”

“In the delta, the Orange Hat crops are sieged by a plague of locusts, and the youth in the Yellow Rivieras are bedridden with boils”

“And what of the Purple Hats?”

“The Court is empty.”

“That is not good…”

“By all accounts, the World Order is disturbed. I sense a quantum reset of some kind…”

“Do you think..?”

“Yes, the Black Hats are on the move.”

Hidden deep in the Quantum Shadow… A forgotten ritual is orchestrated. The Shadow Hats stare into the Abyss, and sing a song to forgotten demons. Distorted travesties emerge! Corporeal forms of havoc and discord, at the command of the Dark Wizards.

“Din and clamor, the White Tower, the Red City, the Blue Bastion… all will wither in the pandemonium of the Shadow.”

The Dark Arcanists reveal themselves at the dawn of an Epoch, But the dawn is there to meet them…

“By Order of the Holy Light, the shapes of Chaos shall not endure!”

“In attendance, the Court of Chaos Magic!”

“Purple fools! The Shadow Hats will teach you the meaning of Chaos! And for you, Wizards of Light, the Song of the Abyss will enrapture the land.”

The Shadows have come to the Runiverse!

Auction

The Shadows were sold as an ascending-bucket auction, meaning the price goes up only as bids increase and everyone pays the same price. It was scheduled to run for 24 hours, but ended early due to reaching the maximum bid cap in about 1 hour. Only 600 of the 666 Shadows are available for auction, with the last 66 reserved as free claims for the following groups:

29 reserved for holders of any Jelly Donut from the Forgotten Souls collection, Book of Shadows and Shadow Crystals from the Atheneum collection.

10 reserved for content creators who made winning videos in the Donut Sacrifice campaign that ran prior to mint.

8 reserved for the Legendary Beasts holders.

6 reserved for the top Souls holders.

13 reserved for Magic Machine

The criteria for reserved Shadows was announced before the snapshot was taken, giving time for holders to collect eligible assets in advance. By spreading the eligibility across multiple collections in the Forgotten Runes ecosystem, it allowed for many long time cult members to have a fair chance of winning a Shadow for free just from assets they previously held.

Goated Bids

All auctions for Shadows were capped at 0.2 BTC in order to cap the bids from raising too high. Any bid of 0.2 BTC would be considered a "Goated Bid," and the auction was scheduled to close upon reaching 600 of them. Goated bids could not be outbid, and would guarantee at least 1 Shadow as well as an entry into a raffle for one of the elusive Shadow Hats sub 1k Ordinals.

Auction Results

The auction ended early with 600 successful Goated bids within just an hour of opening. As a result, each Shadow was sold at a price of 0.2 BTC each, with all bids that were under this amount or who submitted their bid too late receiving a complete refund.

They were listed on the Magic Eden Ordinals marketplace 4 days after the auction ended, due to manual updating on the Magic Eden team's part.

While waiting for the Shadows to get listed on Magic Eden, the dotta held the raffle amongst the Goated Bidders to determine which bidder won the Shadow Hat. Aside from the hats representing the founding members of Magic Machine (Shadow Dotta, Shadow Goat, and Shadow Bear), the winner would have the choice to pick any Shadow Hat they desired.

On 1/12/2024, dotta open sourced and even inscribed the randomizer code used to pick the winner of the Shadow Hat auction ahead of time. The hash block confirmed in the last block prior to 1PM PST on 1/12/24 and the two following blocks were used to determine the winner. This was to ensure 100% transparency and fairness among the raffle participants.

The winner of the auction happened to be someone who was new to Ordinals collecting and wished to instead auction off his winning ticket. Rather than picking a Shadow Hat for himself and auctioning it off independently, he requested dotta help him facilitate the auction so that the winner gets to pick the Shadow Hat they most want. dotta agreed, and scheduled a 24 hour auction on 1/16/24 with a minimum bid of 1.5 BTC via Discord. All bids required a minimum 0.1 BTC increase from the previous bidder, and all bids had to be made public.

Adam Hollander won the bid with an ending price of 2.5 BTC. As a long time cult member and believer of FRWC, he expressed his excitement in a Twitter thread below: https://twitter.com/HollanderAdam/status/1747769733418451026

Inscription Mechanics

The Forgotten Runes Shadow Hats collection on Bitcoin Ordinals is not only an artistic masterpiece but also a technical achievement. In order to fully realize this vision, Magic Machine enlisted the help of Charlie spears to help with the inscription process. He outlined the technicals in this blog post. In addition, dotta himself also made a Twitter thread going over the process.

https://twitter.com/dotta/status/1744427188470854043

The collection consists of 666 "Shadows" inscriptions that originate from 10 "Shadow Hats" that appeared on Bitcoin sub 1k. These Shadows were brought into existence through a mysterious event called "The Ritual".

The on-chain transaction summoning the Shadows from the Shadow Hats.

Origination

When ordinals first launched in January 2023, 10 mysterious figures appeared on-chain, all in the first 1,000 inscriptions. These 10 "Shadow Hats" would soon participate in a ritual to summon 666 Shadows onto Bitcoin.

Connecting the Narrative to the Technical

The Forgotten Runes team approached OrdinalHub in August 2023 to produce 666 inscriptions on Bitcoin that tie in with the Forgotten Runes fantasy world. They wanted to utilize the 10 "Shadows" inscribed early on to play a role in telling the story of the overall collection.

The team decided to create a "Summoning Circle" on Bitcoin by creating a network graph of addresses. They sent the 10 original Shadow Hats to 10 different addresses and created a circular network graph, or more specifically a "Decagram", by sending transactions between them.

Example of a Summoning Circle with embedded Runes.

The Ritual

Once the Shadow Hats were arranged and properly mapped together, forming a "Summoning Circle" on Bitcoin, the team began inscribing the 666 Shadows from the network-graph-summoning-circle. Each Shadow inscription was generated from the address that corresponds to its Shadow Hat.

The ritual took place on August 28, 2023, around blocks #805,000+. 666 Shadows were inscribed and now live forever on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The 666 Numerology

The Ritual wasn't just special because of the Summoning Circle – there are several other mechanics underneath the Shadows as well:

• All Shadows are inscribed on satoshis originating from Block 666, one of the oldest blocks dating back to just days after Bitcoin started, on January 15.
• All of the Sat Numbers the Shadows are inscribed on end in the 66X range.
• The "padding" or "size" of the UTXO of each Shadow is 666 satoshis.

Dynamic Assembly

The Shadows are dynamically assembled gifs from a .js file & a sprite sheet, which dramatically saves on space, fees, and adds interesting dynamism to the collection overall.

The Forgotten Runes Shadow Hats project united the creative and the technical, showcasing the potential for cool things that can be done on Bitcoin and with inscriptions.