A Solo Creator’s Journey in On-Chain Art
In the fast-evolving world of Ordinals, countless collections have surfaced. Some experimental, some derivative, and a few destined to be remembered as landmarks in the medium’s history. Among them stands a body of work both playful and profound: Bitcoin Worms, their chaotic progeny the Lil Wiggles, and the broader creative ecosystem built around them by a single artist who never set out to code but instead fell in love with the permanence of immutable data.
The Origins: Bitcoin Worms (2023)
The story begins with Bitcoin Worms, a self-inscribe collection of SVG worms released in 2023.
Instead of minting through a launchpad, collectors generated their Worm on bitcoinworms.com, downloaded the SVG file, and inscribed it themselves directly to Bitcoin. Each Worm was then indexed and tracked. This made the process first-come, first-served, with no intermediaries. It was a pure experiment in autonomy and permanence.
The files themselves were tiny. Most Worms came in at around 800 bytes, proving that entire collections could exist fully on-chain without bloat. “Small files, small worms” became a mantra. It was efficiency as philosophy, art as a proof of Bitcoin’s capacity for permanence.
The Evolution: Lil Wiggles
If Worms were the origin, Lil Wiggles were the inevitable degeneration, the demonic offspring of OG Worms colliding with Ordinal culture itself.
Every Wiggle is hand-drawn. Each trait, background, and detail was individually crafted. While the collection pays homage to early Ordinal icons such as Bitcoin Puppets, Goosinals, Honey Badgers, Bitcoin Cyborgs, Wossums, Cheesus and many more. Every element is a reimagining, hand-drawn from scratch, with some OG holders creating there own lil Traits.
Building on the original Worms’ mantra of “small files, small worms”, Lil Wiggles take recursion and layering to the next level. Each piece uses layered recursion, often with higher-quality content, yet most remain under 1KB. Some layers are even HTML, not SVG, enabling interactive elements such as a negative wave moving beneath rainfall. This effect references the “Great Wave Off Ordinals” background, a homage to Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, symbolizing both the artist’s favorite artwork and the coming wave for immutable art and data on Bitcoin.
The backgrounds aren’t filler, they carry personal references to the artist’s childhood and development while embedding conspiratorial tones, foreshadowing the decline of modern systems. Each Wiggle is both character and story, layered with symbolism, humor, and technical experimentation in equal measure.
Interactive Experiments
The Wiggles extended beyond static art into interactive play.
Early minters received Banana Bird Invaders, a fully on-chain game where each player’s PFP acted as their in-game avatar. Before this, the artist released Wiggle Worm, a proof of concept game with only a handful of copies, demonstrating that interactive media itself could live permanently on Bitcoin.
Storytelling joined the ecosystem too. A short story book was inscribed on-chain, paying homage to our roots in children’s storytelling, including a book first written with the artists daughter. These experiments pushed the boundaries of what could be stored on-chain, reinforcing the core philosophy: memory and culture belong in places where they cannot be erased.
From Wiggling to Journalism: The Bitcoin Gazette
The pursuit of permanence didn’t stop with art or games. It grew into journalism.
After experimenting with Ordileaks (2024) a proof of work in immutability, a platform for user-created on-chain articles, the creator launched The Bitcoin Gazette, a fully on-chain newspaper. Articles are inscribed directly to Bitcoin, ensuring they could never be censored, altered, or deleted.
The Gazette wasn’t just a passion project. It proved its technical and cultural weight by placing 4th in the Tiny Vikings Hackathon, demonstrating that immutable journalism has a viable future. This work tied the entire Worm ecosystem back to its foundation: a belief that truth, like art, should live where no one can erase it.
The Artist Behind the Worms
What makes Bitcoin Worms and Lil Wiggles remarkable isn’t only their recursion, hand-drawn detail, or interactivity. It’s that all of it was created by one person.
There was no team, no community managers, no marketing machine. Before Ordinals, the creator had no background in coding. Yet the pursuit of immutability sparked a self-taught journey, leading from HTML and PHP basics into recursion, mini-game development, and fully on-chain publishing. The focus was never on conventional web development, but on learning exactly what was needed to build on Bitcoin.
In a space often dominated by hype-driven collectives, Worms and Wiggles represent something different: the uncompromising vision of a solo creator who chose permanence over promotion.
Where Things Stand Today
The mint has now closed, but the Worm story is far from finished.
Airdrops are underway, rewarding active holders with the remaining Worms. Alongside this, a new derivative collection is being developed. Holders of a certain line of Wiggles will receive an exclusive drop tied to a blue-chip derivative, paired with claimable IRL 3D models of their art.
This derivative won’t just exist on-chain. Each piece will carry a “claimed” or “unclaimed” trait, marking whether the real-world miniature has been redeemed. On marketplaces, collectors will see this distinction instantly, adding a fresh layer of gamification and strategy to trading. Some may hold out for unclaimed pieces, others will chase the IRL connection. It adds a new, playful tension between permanence and physicality.
Conclusion
The Bitcoin Worms universe is more than a collection. It is a sprawling experiment in what it means to make culture permanent.
From SVG Worms to hand-drawn Wiggles, from interactive games to on-chain storybooks, from Ordileaks to The Bitcoin Gazette, every step has been a declaration: art and truth deserve immutability.
No teams. No managers. No shortcuts.
Just one artist, his pen, and the blockchain. WiggleWiggle