Ordinals support is coming to Bitcoin-based online wallet Xverse

Xverse, billed as a “Bitcoin wallet for the Web3,” has just rolled out support for Ordinals, the newly popularized protocol that allows users to enter NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain.

“Today we launched premium support for Ordinals,” tweeted the wallet team wednesday. The company explained that entering NFTs through the software involves “no need to run a node, complex software or anything else,” just some Bitcoin to pay a transaction fee, which can be purchased directly through the app.

Inscriptions are made via Gamma.io, a Bitcoin NFT marketplace that rolled out “ordinal inscriptions without code” last week. According to Xverse, about 5% of Bitcoin inscriptions so far have been created using Gamma’s tools.

After uploading an image and sending a transaction to their provided Ordinals address, users can find their inscriptions in the Xverse NFT collection within 20 to 30 minutes – and embedded in the blockchain forever.

This comes just a day after Hiro, another Bitcoin-focused Web3 wallet, rolled out testnet enrollments on Tuesday. Both wallets interact with Stacks, a “layer 1.5” blockchain with its own NFT economy who settle their transactions in Bitcoin.

Xverse also allows Bitcoin users to interact with Stacks, with plans to introduce instant payments via lightning network.

Bitcoin recently logged its 100,000th Ordinals transaction, continuing a trend of exponential growth. Given that NFTs on Bitcoin were not a feature envisioned by the original developers, their existence is natural sparked controversywith many people unsure whether they want to harm or help the network.

Stack’s co-creator Muneeb Ali said he welcomes the new protocol, states that it marks a “new chapter in Bitcoin history” on Tuesday. The next day, he said that Xverse’s Bitcoin wallet now has the “easiest ramp to ordinals.”

Ken Liao, founder and CEO of Xverse wallet (aka Secret Key Labs), so that the ability to send out one’s ordinal from the wallet will soon be available. Liao was previously an engineering partner at Stacks.

According to Liao, the rise of Ordinals is helping to bring developers back into Bitcoin’s ecosystem, showing that the network is capable of more than letting people “just hold Bitcoin.”

“You’ve always been able to put data on the Bitcoin chain, but in a very limited way,” Liao said, in comments shared with Decrypt via email. “Ordinals made it easier and essentially created a cultural movement for people to do this.”