Bitcoin has finally joined the likes of NFT-enabled blockchains with its latest innovation, called the Ordinals Protocol. The protocol enables users to add images, text, and videos to a single satoshi(the smallest unit of Bitcoin), similar to an NFT token on Ethereum or Solana.
The Ordinals Protocol is the latest innovation where NFT-like functionality can be enabled in the native Bitcoin networks. After the Ordinals Protocol was enacted, its popularity has been skyrocketing. Total non-zero Bitcoin addresses have now hit 44.8 Million from 43.5 Million one month earlier in January 2023. Glassnode believed this popularity was due to the Ordinals Protocol.
Earlier, a satoshi was just the smallest unit of Bitcoin. Now, users can add text, images, or videos with each satoshi, similar to an NFT. These can then be transacted like regular Bitcoins.
Further, there was also an increase in Bitcoin's block size to 2.525 MB, which touched an all-time high on February 12
As per the latest Dune Analytics report, the number of ordinals has crossed 0.33 Million by 7 March 2023. On 1 March 2023, alone, around 25,000 ordinals were inscribed. Inscriptions is the term used to denote the mint of a Bitcoin NFT(or Ordinals).
The type of data that can be actively inscribed on Satoshi is as follows:
The first inscriptions were done on 14 December 2022. The first considerable number of inscriptions(mints) were done at the beginning of February when 473 inscriptions took the total tally to 1152 on 3 February 2023.
The ordinals were started by Casey Rodarmor. Here is an initial tweet from his Twitter account. The entire protocol is open source.
More than 90% of the total inscriptions till now(0.33 Million) are images of different formats such as SVG, PNG, JPG, etc. However, there are 6375 Text-based inscriptions and 1144 Json based inscriptions(codes). There are also 178 PDF inscriptions and 224 Video inscriptions.
The ordinal protocol seems to have a good future. With accelerating mints and a steady recovery in cryptocurrency markets, people would surely flock together to see their favorite blockchain has added NFT capability. This would surely help Bitcoin increase its usability from just transactions.
The success of Ordinal Protocol will help increase the dominance of Bitcoin's market cap over the total crypto market cap.