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When Ordinals launched in January, it caused an uproar in the Bitcoin community as enthusiasts, advocates and developers argued the merits of putting JPEG on the blockchain. As the heated debate continues, the number of Bitcoin inscriptions using Ordinals has already passed 11,000 on Tuesday, according to a Dune report.
Ordinals is the latest project that aims to bring NFTs into the Bitcoin ecosystem. The first project, Counterparty, first introduced non-fungible tokens to Bitcoin with the Rare Pepes collection in 2014, with Stacks following in 2017. However, the Ordinals project is different because its assets, including JPEGs and even video games, are inscribed directly on satoshis on the Bitcoin blockchain without needing a sidechain or additional token.
The Ordinals project has consumed the Bitcoin community and sparked new debates and questions about the ultimate purpose of the Bitcoin network. For some, Ordinals opened a Pandora’s box of threats to the Bitcoin network, including malware attacks and skyrocketing transaction fees.
Other answers are not as apocalyptic.
Longtime Bitcoiner Dan Held tweeted his support for Ordinals, saying the project is “good for Bitcoin.” Held shared a screenshot from an email from the late Hal Finney, in which he wrote about “crypto trading cards.” Held said Finney would like Bitcoin NFTs. Finney, who passed away in 2014, is one of many believed to have been the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Unlike Ethereum and Solana, Ordinals call their NFTs “digital artifacts,” while others in the Bitcoin space call the digital asset simply “inscriptions.” Ordinary inscriptions are possible thanks to a feature introduced by the November 2021 Bitcoin Taproot upgrade that allows arbitrary data to be stored to a satoshi’s witness.
Interest in Ordinals has been steadily increasing since developer Casey Rodarmor launched the project on January 21, 2023, with some looking to push the boundaries of what can be entered on a satoshi.
“The Ordinals project is a milestone for bitcoin, demonstrating how innovation on the bitcoin network can give rise to a variety of new applications beyond its use as good money,” said Lolli co-founder and CEO Alex Adelman Decrypt in an email, calling Ordinals a homecoming moment for Bitcoin.
Adelman says that while Bitcoin still lags far behind Ethereum in terms of investment volume and talent committed to innovating and developing new applications, Bitcoin NFTs will attract a new wave of interest and capital and create new opportunities for developers to build new solutions to facilitate scalability and efficiency.
While the excitement of minting NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain has drawn new attention from proponents of the OG blockchain, Ordinal Inscriptions lack the features many associate with NFTs, such as smart contracts, which the Bitcoin blockchain does not natively support.
Satoshibles developer Brian Laughlan believes the limitations of Ordinals will bring more attention to projects like Stacks.
“The reason I’m even more bullish on Stacks now is because eventually people will start to feel the limitations of ordinals – high main chain fees, no smart contracts, etc.,” Laughlan said Decrypt on Discord. “They want to look at L2 solutions, and Stacks is poised to fill that gap.”
Laughlan says backlash from Bitcoin maximalists has made it difficult for Stacks to “get his voice heard,” adding that Ordinals is the best Stacks could have asked for.
“Now more people are looking at Bitcoin than ever before,” he said. “You got ETH Maxis running Bitcoin nodes and Bitcoin Maxis loving JPEGs all of a sudden! The world has gone mad.”
While the debate surrounding Ordinals continues, inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain are clearly here to stay – whether Bitcoin maxis like it or not.
