Own, Verify, Carry
Three properties define what a Bitcoin Digital Object is. They are deliberately conceptual — statements about what must be true of the object, not about which technology makes it true — so that the category can outlive any single protocol, platform, or company. Where this page mentions concrete mechanisms, they belong to STAS-01, the first open specification that realizes these principles; a future specification may realize them with different mechanisms and still produce BDOs.
Own — ownership belongs to the user
A BDO's ownership derives from Bitcoin, not from an account in someone's database. An application may help with key management, display, custody, or transfer — but the application is not intended to be the ultimate source of truth for the object. A BDO can be held and verified independently of the application that issued or displays it.
This is the property that separates a BDO from an entry in a platform's ledger: the platform's records can describe the object, but ownership ultimately resolves to Bitcoin-secured evidence.
In STAS-01, this is realized through the Taproot Assets protocol: control of the asset that carries the object, under the protocol's rules, is the verifiable basis of ownership.
Verify — from evidence, not from a platform
Anyone must be able to check a BDO from public, portable evidence, without relying on the issuing platform. Two distinct questions are answered separately, on purpose:
- Integrity — is the object intact? The object's canonical content is cryptographically committed at issuance, so any later alteration is detectable by recomputation alone. This part is purely mechanical: given the same evidence and the same rules, independent verifiers reach the same cryptographic result.
- Authenticity — who signed it? The issuer signs the object, and that signature travels with it. Cryptography proves that a specific key produced the signature; associating that key with a real-world identity — a brand, a club, an institution — additionally requires some identity source or trust anchor, which each verifier chooses for itself. A signature proves who signed, according to a key; it does not by itself prove that the signer is who they claim to be, nor that the statement signed is true. Evidence, not a verdict.
In STAS-01, this is realized by a deterministic canonical form whose digest is committed at issuance (integrity), and by attestations — issuer signatures over that commitment, validated with standard cryptography (authenticity). A sound verifier reports integrity, signature validity, and signer identity as separate findings, and never collapses them into a single “verified”.
Carry — the object travels with you
A BDO is recognized and interpreted consistently across compatible applications. Carrying means more than moving a token: the ownership authority and the verification evidence travel with the user, so that another compatible application can independently recognize, verify, and continue using the object.
In STAS-01, this is realized by making the evidence portable and deterministic: the object's canonical document, its protocol proofs, and its attestations move with it, and its canonical form is byte-reproducible — an object you cannot re-verify after moving it has been copied, not carried.
Why an open category
The principles only work if no vendor owns them. The category is defined in a public repository under open licenses; the specifications developed for it evolve through a public RFC process; and implementations — plural, by design — demonstrate it rather than define it. The hierarchy is explicit:
Concepts (Bitcoin Digital Objects, this category) → Specifications (open specs such as STAS-01) → Implementations (platforms, plugins, and tools — see the list).
Nothing lower in the hierarchy may redefine what sits above it.
Go deeper: What is a BDO? · STAS-01 · FAQ