Bitcoin Ordinals Startup, Project Spartacus Revive WikiLeaks Afghan War Logs

The Bitcoin Ordinals startup, OrdinalsBot, and Project Spartacus—a group of anonymous activists dedicated to preserving WikiLeaks’ legacy on the Bitcoin blockchain—are reigniting efforts to inscribe the Afghan War Diary using the Ordinals protocol.

The revival, focused on preserving the War Logs on the Bitcoin network, is supported by Assange Campaign chairman Gabriel Shipton, who noted the importance of safeguarding the Afghan War Diary for future generations.

“Obviously having all that data stored on-chain, forever immutable, is very important for our society to learn from our mistakes,” Shipton told Decrypt in an interview.

“That’s what Julian was always about, publishing these secrets so that people can understand what went on, what happened, and hopefully make corrections to their institutions and their society.”

Shipton partnered with Ordinalsbot to inscribe 76,911 uncensored articles from the War Logs on the Bitcoin network. Starting December 12, Ordinalsbot will relaunch the effort, allowing users to participate in minting the Afghan War Diary.

“Having this information on the Bitcoin Blockchain just really takes Julian’s legacy and WikiLeaks legacy to the next level,” Shipton said. “The Afghan War Diary is no longer on a service somewhere that could go down.”

The Afghan War Diary

The Afghan War Diary, or Afghan War Logs, is a collection of over 91,000 classified U.S. military documents leaked to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. Army Intelligence analyst, in July 2010.

Covering 2004–2010, the logs reveal insights into the Afghan War, including military operations, intelligence, covert missions, and civilian casualties, and reshaped how the public understood the war in Afghanistan, transparency, and modern warfare.

One of the main criticisms of WikiLeaks releasing the Afghan War Logs in 2010 was that it would put lives in danger if it were released. Anticipating this, Shipton said, Assange made plans to protect the identity of the people listed in the documents.

“I think what’s really missed about this story is that Julian created technology to help redact these massive files, redactions that previously weren’t available to these journalists who were taking out names like they weren’t able to do that to these files,” Shipton told Decrypt.

He continued: “Julian developed technology to protect people, and these releases eventually brought an end to this war. So I think those benefits really outweigh those accusations.”

Assange was arrested in 2019 after Ecuador revoked his asylum, ending nearly seven years in their London embassy, and faced extradition to the United States on espionage charges for publishing classified documents. In June, Assange accepted a plea deal, and was released from Belmarsh prison in London. In November, U.S. Representatives Thomas Massie and James McGovern called on President Joe Biden to pardon Assange before leaving office.

“A pardon would remove the precedent set by the plea deal and send a clear message that the U.S. government under your leadership will not target or investigate journalists and media outlets simply for doing their jobs,” the Congressmen wrote.

The Afghan War Diary is the latest in high-profile inscriptions orchestrated by the Ordinalsbot team. In March, founding member of the legendary Wu-Tang Clan, Ghostface Killah, tapped the platform to launch a collection of music-themed Ordinal Inscriptions.

That same month, Ordinalsbot collaborated with Marathon Digital Holdings to mint the Runestone, the largest Ordinal inscription at the time at 4MB. The Runestone inscription was sent to a wallet that supposedly belonged to Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

Inscribing the War Diary on the Bitcoin Blockchain

Named after the famous Roman gladiator-turned-rebel leader, “Project Spartacus” is an initiative to permanently inscribe the Afghan War Logs, initially published by Julian Assange, onto the Bitcoin blockchain.

“It’s in the name as well—Project Spartacus—you’re standing up, and each Bitcoiner is standing up alongside Julian,” Ordinalsbot co-founder Toby Lewis told Decrypt. “It’s how they can share a piece of history that’s very controversial but considered very important, especially by Bitcoiners. It’s a moment in time.”

In October 2023, 2,000 of these logs were inscribed during the project’s initial phase before it stalled. Starting next week, WikiLeaks supporters will be able to choose how many articles from the Afghan War Diary they want to mint in bundles of 1, 5, 20, 50, or 100.

Inspired by Stella Assange’s presentation on Project Spartacus at the Bitcoin Conference in 2023, Ordinalsbot co-founder Brian Laughlan said the Ordinalsbot team joined in to revive the stalled Afghan War Diary initiative.

“The project stalled for a while due to technical reasons. The previous team, overwhelmed or unable to continue, eventually moved on,” Laughlan said. “Through our contacts at Bitcoin Magazine, we connected with Gabriel and felt honored to step in. We were ready to plug the project back in and power it up with services prepared.

Laughlan emphasized his belief that ordinals could be used as a tool for immutable, censorship-resistant data storage beyond NFTs. He added that minting the Afghan War Diary inscriptions is free, with collectors paying the Bitcoin network fees.

“To be clear, this isn’t about making money—our service fee only covers costs,” Laughlan added.

A Long Relationship between Bitcoin and WikiLeaks

For Shipton, bringing the Afghan War Diary to Bitcoin follows a long relationship between WikiLeaks and Bitcoin since the early days of the crypto when WikiLeaks began accepting Bitcoin donations.

One of the last posts from Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto before disappearing in 2010 was regarding WikiLeaks and the group turning to Bitcoin after its financial services were cut off.

In 2017, following rumors that he had died, Assange put those rumors to bed by reading out Bitcoin’s latest block hash during an online talk.

“WikiLeaks was able to continue paying for its servers, paying for its staff, and everything in Bitcoin,” Shipton said. “Bitcoin was their operating currency, and they had the biggest state on the planet, the most powerful state totally debanking them, and they were able to survive and keep publishing.”

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair