Bitcoin NFT Ordinals Increase Taproot Adoption by 1000% in Q1 2023
The emergence of Bitcoin NFT Ordinals is one of the fascinating developments on the leading blockchain in 2023. This has correlated with an increase in the use of Taproot to process transactions.
Driving taproot adoption on the Bitcoin network
Data from Dune Analytics shows that taproot adoption has gone from being used in less than 2% of all Bitcoin transactions to peaking at 9.75% on February 10th. This represents an increase of 1000% and is largely due to the increase of Bitcoin NFT Ordinals.
These unique NFTs use the witness function in transactions to include additional data expressed in a hexadecimal system. This allows block sizes to be increased beyond the standard limit of 1MB to 4MB, allowing miners to add images, sound or even games to their NFTs.
Since the end of January, Ordinal’s NFTs have been on the rise despite having been holding off since December. About 53,000 of these tokens have already been issued on the Bitcoin blockchain in less than two weeks.
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According to data from Dune Analytics, February 9, 2023 represented the day with the most ordinals minted, with approximately 21,000 new tokens. Most of them (20,895) included pictures; there were also 136 videos, two applications and two audio files, while the rest had only text.
Bitcoin Taproot and the NFT Debate
In 2021, Bitcoin underwent a major update known as Taproot, which improved scalability and privacy for Bitcoin users. Taproot allows Bitcoin users to spend less time and resources verifying transactions, and it supports smart contracts and other sophisticated layers of Bitcoin.
Taproot is expected to significantly impact how people use and interact with Bitcoin, and several projects are already using the technology. It is expected that taproot adoption will significantly increase the use of NFTs.
By allowing users to transfer ownership of digital assets quickly, Taproot makes it much more convenient for people to engage in NFT transactions. In addition, Taproot enables the creation of more sophisticated smart contracts, which can lead to more advanced NFTs. Furthermore, the increased privacy provided by Taproot is likely to make NFTs more secure and reliable.
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Nevertheless, the emergence of Ordinal NFT has not been without debate. Critics argue that an increase in the number of transactions on the Bitcoin network will lead to congestion and an increase in transaction fees. Beyond the debate, Ordinal’s NFTs do not affect the Bitcoin network and their adoption is expected to increase in the coming weeks.
Bitcoin price
2023 has been a positive year for Bitcoin, with price booms being a major talking point in the financial ecosystem. The leading cryptocurrency moved from $16,500 to a one-year high of $24,000, with market sentiment currently positive.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $21,700, down 7% in the last week.
Featured image from Unsplash.com, Charts from TradingView.com
