If there was any indication that the hype surrounding Ordinals – a way of entering media onto the Bitcoin blockchain similar to NFTs – had died down, that idea was dashed today. The buzz is only getting bigger and wilder, especially now that someone figured out how to create some form of “fungible tokens” using the Ordinals protocol.
Ordinary inscriptions rose to a new one-day high of around 31,700 today at the time of writing, per a Dune dashboard that tracks public blockchain data. And it’s all because of the launch of “BRC-20,” an experimental way to use the technology to let people mint and transfer whatever tokens they want via the Bitcoin blockchain.
It’s the latest development in the Ordinals saga that has angered some Bitcoin maximalists, but also excited many creators and collectors about the expansion possibilities surrounding the original blockchain network. Now the technology is used in an analogue of the ERC-20 token standard on Ethereum, but it is still very early and experimental.
A pseudonymous computer enthusiast on the chain by name Dome launched the BRC-20 implementation on Wednesday. Domo calls BRC-20 – short for “Bitcoin Request for Comment” – an experiment inspired by another pseudonymous user’s tweet along with the standard Sats Names (.sats).
“I [heard] about the possibility of BRC-20 in the last couple of days on Twitter and was curious if I could use the .sats naming format to create it, said Domo Decrypt via telegram. “Basically, what I was trying to do was see if I could create an off-chain state with the tool I had at hand (Dune Analytics) and inscriptions.”
The Domos Ordi token launched on Wednesday, but meme-inspired tokens like Doge, Pepe, and even Meme itself have been distributed by users via BRC-20 and Ordinals since.
According to Dune, the vast majority of Ordinal inscriptions created since the BRC-20 implementation went live are text-based. In total, more than 385,000 total inscriptions have been made via Ordinals to date, with almost all coming in the last six weeks.
“This fits into a larger trend of text-based inscriptions becoming more popular due to their small file sizes, which can be as low as a few bytes,” pseudonymous NFT historian Leonidas told Decrypt on Twitter. “Because you pay fees proportional to the file size being entered, it costs significantly less in fees to enter JSON [code] or text.”
Launched in late January thanks to the Bitcoin network’s Segwit and Taproot upgrades, Ordinals took the crypto world by storm as more and more enthusiasts flocked to the original blockchain network to create what have been colloquially called Bitcoin NFTs. They don’t work exactly like NFTs on Ethereum, for example, but the end result is similar.
The Ordinals protocol has been used for a wide variety of on-chain media inscriptions so far, including artwork, profile pictures, playable games, and video-based web apps. Even Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs auctioned off its own original art collection via Ordinals, netting $16.5 million in the process.
According to a report released last week by Galaxy Research, the fast-rising Bitcoin NFT market could be worth $4.5 billion by 2025
Despite the social media buzz surrounding the BRC-20 token and the growing inscriptions that agree, Domo said it should by no means be considered the “standard” for Bitcoin-based tokens. They warned against anyone mass-triggering such tokens on Twitter, calling them “worthless” and recommends that other builders design and code their own, more robust solutions.
But it is a starting point. Although intended as a fun experiment, the launch of BRC-20 has already captured the imagination of many Bitcoin users. Domo said the responses have been better than expected.
“I haven’t had any really angry reactions yet, which I’m relieved about,” they said. “But some of the more technically inclined have pointed out (and rightly so) that there are much better ways to achieve what I do. And some others ask why at all (fair enough).”
“At the end of the day, it was an experiment and I think the majority understands that,” Domo said. “They seem to be having fun.”
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