SovereignRender
Tester Guide & Overview — turn video into self-contained, on-chain-ready artifacts for Bitcoin Ordinals.
▶ Open the app →
1 · Quick Start
Open it
- On a computer: just visit sovereignrender-demo.fly.dev
- iPhone: open in Safari → Share → Add to Home Screen
- Android: open in Chrome → menu → Install app
It launches fullscreen like a native app — or just use it in the browser.
⏱️ First load takes ~10–20 seconds. The server sleeps when idle to save cost, so the first request wakes it. After that it's fast. This is expected, not a bug.
Compile your first artifact (60 seconds)
- Drop an MP4 on the drop zone (short clips work best).
- Watch the Live Preview render it as ASCII in real time.
- Tweak a few Render Settings — resolution, color mode, character set — and watch the preview update.
- Keep an eye on the Size Estimate — that number is the whole game (see below).
- Hit COMPILE.
- Download the resulting
.html and open it in any browser — that single file is the artifact. It plays with no server, no internet, nothing external.
Worth trying
- Color Mode → Terminal (Mono) + change the Mono color swatch — the whole render recolors
- Character Set — Standard, Binary, Block, Katakana (Matrix rain), Hex…
- Resolution — Low → Max; watch quality vs. size
- Audio → Embed 128k Stereo — the artifact plays sound too (use a clip that has audio)
- Browser Mode — compiles entirely on your device, no server
- Size Estimate → Target + Auto-Shrink — set a byte budget and let it fit
- /preflight — see the artifact validated in a simulated Ordinals sandbox: /preflight
What feedback helps most
- Did the workflow feel clear? Where did you hesitate?
- Was the UI readable on your screen and phone?
- Did the output quality meet expectations vs. the source?
- Anything confusing, broken, or slow?
- On mobile: did install + on-device compile work?
2 · What the app does
SovereignRender turns an MP4 into a single, self-contained HTML file that renders the video as animated ASCII/character art — small enough to live permanently on the Bitcoin blockchain as an Ordinals inscription.
MP4 → downscale to a character grid → map pixels to characters
→ delta-compress frames (zlib + inter-frame deltas)
→ embed as base64 inside one HTML file with a tiny JS player
The output has no external dependencies — open it in any browser, offline, in five years, and it still plays. That self-containment is the point: an inscription must render forever with nothing to call home to.
Two ways to compile
| Mode | Runs | Audio | Best for |
| Server (default) | Cloud server | ✅ yes | Full quality, audio, large frames |
| Browser Mode | Your device | ❌ no | Privacy, offline, no backend |
On phones, Browser Mode is the default so the app works on-device.
Feature reference
- Resolution — Low (100×28) → Max (400×112) character grid
- Color Mode — Terminal (Mono) with a custom color, or Full RGB
- Character Set — Standard, Dense, Binary, Block, Hex, Katakana, Geometric, Pipes, or custom
- Typography — the font baked into the artifact (Courier, VT323, Press Start 2P, Orbitron…)
- Framerate — keep full or thin it (½, ⅓, ¼) to save bytes
- Audio — strip, embed 128k stereo, or compress to 8 kHz mono
- Filters — contrast, brightness (gamma is preview-only)
- Trim — pick the exact in/out of the clip
- Provenance — embed title, creator BTC address, description, website
- Recursive Font — point at an on-chain font inscription for a permanent font
- Size Target + Auto-Shrink — set a byte budget; the app steers toward it
- Batch Queue + Collection Mode — process many clips; export a numbered series
- Pre-Flight Sandbox — proves the artifact renders under Ordinals' real security policy before you spend money inscribing
Why "byte size" is everywhere
On Bitcoin, you pay by the byte to inscribe. A few seconds of normal video is far too big. ASCII rendering + the delta codec shrink it ~90%+, and the always-visible, color-coded size readout is how you steer a clip down to something economical to put on-chain.
3 · Real-world uses
- Permanent on-chain video art. Inscribe animation directly on Bitcoin. Unlike an NFT that points to a server/IPFS link (which rots), the whole artwork lives in the inscription and renders from the chain.
- Economically-viable on-chain motion. Video is normally impossible to inscribe affordably; ASCII + delta compression + a live byte budget make seconds of animation fit in tens of KB.
- Generative / PFP collections. Batch Queue + Collection Mode + provenance support numbered, self-contained series with creator attribution.
- Recursive inscriptions. Reference a separate on-chain font inscription so the artifact composes itself from other permanent pieces — a flagship Ordinals pattern.
- Provenance & authenticity. Creator BTC address + metadata are embedded in the artifact and a companion
metadata.json.
- Creator monetization. A companion component can gate rendering/streaming behind BTCPay / Lightning — pay-per-render in Bitcoin. (Not active on this demo.)
- De-risked inscription. The Pre-Flight Sandbox confirms the artifact actually renders under Ordinals' sandbox before you spend sats on an irreversible inscription.
- Beyond crypto. Every artifact is one dependency-free HTML file — useful anywhere link rot and permanence matter: archival, offline kiosks, email-able interactive art.