# Overview ORDEX is the premier marketplace for the trading of digital artifacts and tokens on the Ethscriptions protocol. ### What are ethscriptions? Ethscriptions are a new way of creating and sharing digital artifacts on Ethereum using transaction calldata.\ \ Ethscriptions are an alternative to smart contracts—which are prohibitively expensive for most users—and to L2s, which today are centralized. Ethscriptions is a protocol that allows users to share information and perform computations on Ethereum L1 at a drastically lower cost. Ethscriptions achieves this by bypassing smart contract storage and execution and instead calculating state by applying deterministic protocol rules to "dumb" Ethereum calldata. The goal of Ethscriptions is to give ordinary users the ability to perform decentralized computations for a reasonable price.\ \ Today, Ethscriptions primarily function as cheaper NFTs. After the launch of [the Ethscriptions Virtual Machine](https://docs.ethscriptions.com/v/ethscriptions-vm), they will function as a cheaper alternative to the Ethereum Virtual Machine.\ \ Reference:\ "" --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.ordex.io/ordex/overview.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.