---

name: bitcoin-metaprotocols-atomicals description: | Atomicals protocol: alternative metaprotocol family with ARC-20 (fungible) and AVM (Atomicals VM) for richer logic. UTXO-bound digital objects. USE WHEN: working with Atomicals, comparing with Ordinals / Runes. allowed-tools: Read, Grep, Glob

Atomicals Protocol

A metaprotocol on Bitcoin focused on digital object abstractions. Includes:

• ARC-20 — fungible tokens.
• NFTs with stronger metadata.
• AVM (Atomicals VM) — programmability layer.

Less mainstream than Ordinals/Runes, and markedly quieter since 2025 — see Status below before treating it as a live ecosystem.

Concept

Each Atomical is a digital object with:

• Unique atomical ID.
• Type (NFT, FT, container, etc.).
• Associated UTXO carrying ownership.
• Metadata committed via inscription-like envelope.

ARC-20

Fungible token variant:

• Each "1 ATOMICAL" of an ARC-20 = 1 satoshi.
• Tokens move 1:1 with sats.
• Strict UTXO accounting (no off-chain indexer needed for balances — it's the actual sat count).

This is different from BRC-20/Runes where token amounts are arbitrary.

AVM (Atomicals VM)

Proposed VM for richer logic on Atomicals:

• Stack-based.
• Can validate spending conditions beyond Bitcoin script.
• Used for "minting rules", "container constraints".

Compared to other metaprotocols

Aspect	Atomicals	Ordinals	Runes
Object model	Object-oriented	Sat-bound	UTXO-bound
Fungible mechanism	ARC-20 (1:1 with sats)	BRC-20 (off-chain)	Native protocol
Programmability	AVM proposed	Recursive inscriptions	Protocol rules
Adoption	Niche	Massive	Large

Status

Development was genuinely active through early 2025; what follows is where things stand as of September 2026.

• Reference stack dormant. atomicals/atomicals-electrumx has had no commits since 27 March 2025 and its newest release is v1.5.2.0 (27 March 2025). atomicals/atomicals-js last pushed the same day, atomicals/avm-interpreter on 22 September 2024. None of the three is archived, so read this as dormancy, not abandonment.
• Atomicals Market closed 30 April 2026. The main dedicated ARC-20/Atomicals marketplace shut down; its own farewell page (atomicalmarket.com) states that listings and bids auto-expire, that assets remain on Bitcoin and need no action, and that the frontend repository is being archived.
• Docs still maintained, by third parties. The Bitcoin Universe Atomicals/ARC-20 documentation platform ships version 2026.08 (pages last verified 31 August 2026) and pins atomicals-electrumx v1.5.2.0 as its protocol authority.
• Smaller TVL/volume than Ordinals/Runes ecosystem.
• AVM proposal still experimental. The interpreter is a pinned beta revision; no service is known to execute AVM contracts, and the maintained third-party docs state that no Universe service does, as of September 2026.

Use cases

• Realm names — +atomical-name style.
• Containers — collections of atomicals.
• ARC-20 tokens with sat-level precision.

See also

• ordinals/SKILL.md
• runes/SKILL.md
• brc-20/SKILL.md