A prominent non-fungible token (NFT) protocol based on the Bitcoin blockchain, “Ordinals,” surpassed an impressive benchmark in a significant turn of events.
The network’s transaction surged to 10 million a few days after the Ordinals creator, Rodarmor, announced stepping down from the project.
Reaching over 10 million inscriptions suggests that many transactions have occurred on the protocol. Casey Rodarmor tweeted that he had stepped down as the lead maintainer of Ordinals.
He claimed that he was not giving Ordinal full attention and handed over the role to a programmer, Raphjaph. He further emphasized that donations from the community will fund the coder’s work on the project.
Ordinals Protocol And Its Rapid Growth
Bitcoin Ordinals is a protocol that supports the transcription of a unique identifier to individual satoshis (SATs) to enable easy tracking during transactions.
After the launch of Ordinals in January, the protocol quickly gained popularity as a means to create new assets on the Bitcoin blockchain. Initially, Ordinals served to “inscribe” data on individual satoshis (the smallest divisible unit of BTC).
However, the rapid growth in the number of Ordinals inscriptions occurred when the BRC-20 token standard was introduced in early March.
This new token standard, established by the pseudonymous “Domo,” enabled users to mint new tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain.
According to data from BRC-20.io, in the first week, the number of Bitcoin-based tokens jumped from a hundred to 25,000 at the time of writing.
The introduction of the BRC-20 token standard has expanded Bitcoin’s functionality. This increased utility has boosted the adoption and use of the Bitcoin blockchain for tokenization and asset creation.
Controversy Surrounding Bitcoin Ordinals – Efficiency And Speed Concern
The growth of Ordinals has not been without its share of controversy, as critics among the Bitcoin community have raised concerns about its method of “inscribing” assets on the network.
They argue this approach is “inefficient and wasteful,”, particularly regarding block space and transaction fees.
In response, alternative developers have been exploring using smart contracts to mint assets and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Bitcoin blockchain. They aim to address the efficiency issues associated with Ordinals by leveraging smart contracts.
On the other hand, proponents of the initiative have praised Ordinals for its ability to attract new users to the broader Bitcoin ecosystem.
Notably, even prominent anti-Bitcoin advocate Peter Schiff recently minted a small number of NFTs on Bitcoin using the Ordinals protocol.
While the surge in Ordinals-related activity has increased BTC transaction fees, miners have greatly benefited from this heightened network engagement.
According to data from Dune Analytics, miners have received over $44 million in fees related to Ordinals transactions.
Featured image from Pixabay and chart from TradingView