OCM Dimensions

OCM Dimensions is a landmark Bitcoin Ordinals project: high-resolution, interactive 3D generative art rendered entirely from on-chain code. Launched in February 2023 by the OnChainMonkey team, it proved—early and definitively—that Bitcoin can support sophisticated, permanent digital art without off-chain dependencies.

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TL;DR (For Collectors & Builders)

• Fully on-chain, interactive 3D generative art on Bitcoin
• Each artwork rendered live from code, not stored images
• Uses recursion, compression, and shared on-chain libraries
• Historic early sats + early Ordinals experimentation
• Open-source tools included to build your own Bitcoin-native art

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Example OCM Dimensions artwork. Each piece is a live-rendered 3D animated sculpture generated entirely from code inscribed on Bitcoin.

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Table of Contents

• Why OCM Dimensions Matters
• Historical Context: Bitcoin Ordinals & On-Chain Art
• Technical Firsts
• About This Repository
• Quick Start
• Repository Structure
• Inscribing on Bitcoin
• Contributing
• Philosophy
• Further Reading

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Why OCM Dimensions Matters

OCM Dimensions expanded the boundaries of what was thought possible on Bitcoin:

• High-fidelity 3D art Each piece is a real-time rendered 3D animation that adapts to any screen resolution, including 4K+ displays.

• Extreme on-chain efficiency Each artwork is under ~1KB despite its visual complexity—made possible through generative code, compression, and recursion.

• Protocol-level permanence No IPFS. No APIs. No servers. Everything needed to render the art lives on Bitcoin itself.

• Bitcoin-native provenance Early parent-child inscription patterns define collection membership and authenticity directly on-chain.

OCM Dimensions helped establish Bitcoin Ordinals as a serious medium for generative and conceptual digital art.

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Historical Context: Bitcoin Ordinals & On-Chain Art

Bitcoin Ordinals allow individual satoshis to carry arbitrary data—turning the smallest unit of Bitcoin into a permanent digital artifact.

However, Bitcoin’s block space is scarce and expensive. Early assumptions were that only simple images or text could be inscribed sustainably.

OCM Dimensions challenged that assumption.

By combining:

• Generative art (code instead of images),
• Compression (gzip + base64),
• Recursion (shared on-chain libraries: Three.js, p5.js),

OCM Dimensions demonstrated that complex, interactive, high-resolution art could live entirely on Bitcoin.

Many techniques now considered standard in advanced Ordinals development—recursive calls, shared libraries, parent-child provenance—were first demonstrated publicly at scale in OCM Dimensions.

Part of the art of Dimensions is the concept of being a seed in a growing network of art on Bitcoin. Each new artwork created that is enabled by Dimensions is a new branch in the growing on-chain "tree" of networked art. Now, after two years, the tree has grown into a forest of art works by numerous artists and thousands of works (many still waiting to be discovered!). OCM Dimensions is one of the most linked inscriptions on Bitcoin.

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Technical Firsts

Recursive Inscriptions

OCM Dimensions pioneered recursion with code on Bitcoin, allowing inscriptions to call other inscriptions at render time. This made modular, composable on-chain software possible.

On-Chain Libraries

Compressed versions of:

• Three.js (3D rendering)
• p5.js (generative art)
• fflate (compression)

were inscribed once and reused across artworks—dramatically reducing size and enabling rich visuals.

Parent-Child Provenance

A parent inscription defines the collection. Child inscriptions define individual artworks. Authenticity and membership are verifiable at the protocol level.

Historic Satoshis

Early Dimensions pieces were inscribed on satoshis mined in January 2009, embedding the work directly into Bitcoin’s earliest history.

On-Chain Random Reveal

The first fully on-chain random reveal mechanisms on Bitcoin, ensuring fair distribution without off-chain randomness. Originally thought impossible with immutable inscriptions.

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About This Repository

This repository contains the open-source tooling developed for OCM Dimensions, and available for everyone to use.

It enables artists and developers to:

• Build generative and interactive Ordinals
• Compress HTML/JS for Bitcoin constraints
• Reuse on-chain libraries via recursion
• Create rich visuals without protocol changes

These tools are production-proven by OCM Dimensions itself.

The On-chain library inscriptions:

These inscriptions are the foundation of the workflow in this repo. You use recursion (fetching on-chain content from within your inscription) to load the libraries at render time.

• OCM Dimensions (fflate + Three.js): 2dbdf9ebbec6be793fd16ae9b797c7cf968ab2427166aaf390b90b71778266abi0
• p5.js library: 255ce0c5a0d8aca39510da72e604ef8837519028827ba7b7f723b7489f3ec3a4i0

Direct links:

• https://ordinals.com/inscription/2dbdf9ebbec6be793fd16ae9b797c7cf968ab2427166aaf390b90b71778266abi0
• https://ordinals.com/inscription/255ce0c5a0d8aca39510da72e604ef8837519028827ba7b7f723b7489f3ec3a4i0

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Quick Start

Prerequisites

You will need the following installed on your machine:

• Node.js and npm. You can download these from here.
• make command. This is usually pre-installed on Unix-based systems. For Windows, you can use a utility like Make for Windows.

Installation

You can download the tools directly from this GitHub repository. Simply click on the 'Code' button on this page and then click 'Download ZIP'. Once downloaded, unzip the file and navigate to the resulting directory in your terminal.

If you have git installed, you can also clone this repository by running:

git clone https://github.com/metagood/OCM-Dimensions.git
cd OCM-Dimensions

Workflows

Pick the workflow that matches your project:

• Browser UI (no terminal needed): open tools/browserUI/index.html in your browser and use the Compile button to generate a ready-to-inscribe page.
• Three.js: use tools/threejs to compress your scene logic and auto-load the on-chain Three.js + fflate bundle.
• p5.js: use tools/p5js to compress your sketch and auto-load the on-chain p5.js library.
• Compress HTML: use tools/compress-html when you already have a full HTML page you want to gzip+base64 and stream on-chain.

For guided walkthroughs, start in tutorials/README.md.

Usage

Compress HTML

1. Navigate to the tools/compress-html directory with cd tools/compress-html.
2. Place your .html file in the input directory.
3. Run make clean && make in the terminal.
4. Your compressed file will be index.html (for inscribing) and index.local.html (for local preview).
5. Open index.local.html in a browser to test locally with the Ordinals content URLs already in place.

Use Three.js

1. Navigate to the tools/threejs directory with cd tools/threejs.
2. Minify your 02_main.js file and save it as compressed-inputs/02_main.min.js.
   • If you have minify installed, run minify 02_main.js > compressed-inputs/02_main.min.js in the terminal.
   • If you don't have minify, just put the js code in compressed-inputs/02_main.min.js directly.
3. Run make clean && make in the terminal.
4. Your final files will be index.html (for inscribing) and index.local.html (for local preview).
5. Open index.local.html in a browser to test locally with the Ordinals content URLs already in place.

Use p5.js

1. Navigate to the tools/p5js directory with cd tools/p5js.
2. Put your js code in input/02_main.js.
3. Run make clean && make in the terminal.
4. Your final files will be index.html (for inscribing) and index.local.html (for local preview).
5. Open index.local.html in a browser to test locally with the Ordinals content URLs already in place.

Local testing tip

The make targets now generate index.local.html for each workflow with https://ordinals.com prefilled for the content fetches. Use it for local preview, and inscribe index.html as-is.

Tests

Run a smoke test build of all three command-line workflows:

./scripts/run-smoke-tests.sh

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Repository Structure

• tools/compress-html/ - Compress a single HTML file using gzip and base64.
• tools/threejs/ - Helper scripts for Three.js projects.
• tools/p5js/ - Helper scripts for p5.js projects.
• tools/browserUI/ - In-browser interface to bundle code with selected libraries.
• tools/compress-html/examples/ - Samples demonstrating larger pieces of content.
• tools/compress-html/onepage/ - Example output from the browser UI.
• tutorials/ - Step-by-step guides for the Three.js, p5.js, and compressed HTML workflows.
• scripts/ - Repository smoke tests.

Each directory includes a README with specific build instructions.

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Inscribing on Bitcoin

Once your final index.html is ready, inscribe it using any Ordinals-compatible wallet or service.

Your artwork will render directly from on-chain code—no external infrastructure required.

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Contributing

Issues, pull requests, and improvements are welcome. This repo exists to expand what’s possible for art and software on Bitcoin.

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Philosophy

OCM Dimensions treats Bitcoin as:

• A monetary system
• A permanence layer
• A medium for generative art

By embracing Bitcoin’s constraints, it reveals new creative possibilities—where art, code, and provenance converge at the protocol layer.

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Further Reading

• https://onchainmonkey.com/collection/ocm-dimensions
• https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/the-rise-of-ordinals-and-nfts-on-the-medium-of-bitcoin