Bitcoin fees crash after record daily average of $128 on halving day

April 22, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin fees top Ethereum for 3 days in a row as halving approaches

April 19, 2024 Coin Telegraph

Ordinals Market Registers Record Sale: Bitcoin Budgie Changes Hands for Over $1.1 Million in BTC

March 1, 2024 Bitcoin.com

Why a gold rush for inscriptions has broken half a dozen blockchains

December 19, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Daily gas spent on EVM inscriptions surges to record high of $8M

December 18, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Ordinals could be stopped if blockchain bug is patched, claims dev

December 6, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Core

A Bitcoin Core developer claimed Bitcoin Ordinals exploit a vulnerability allowing inscribers to bypass data size limits, which could soon be fixed.

A bug fix on the Bitcoin network could put a stop to new Bitcoin Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens as they’re causing network congestion by “exploiting a vulnerability,” claims a Bitcoin Core developer.

In a Dec. 6 X (Twitter) post, developer Luke Dashjr said inscriptions — used by Ordinals and BRC-20 creators to embed data on satoshi’s — exploit a Bitcoin Core vulnerability to “spam the blockchain.”

He explained the Bitcoin Core code has allowed users to set limits on the size of extra data in transactions since 2013, but “by obfuscating their data as program code, inscriptions bypass this limit.”

PSA: “Inscriptions” are exploiting a vulnerability in #Bitcoin Core to spam the blockchain.
— Luke Dashjr (@LukeDashjr) December 6, 2023

The bug allowing inscriptions to bypass this limit was recently fixed in the latest update to Bitcoin Knots, a Bitcoin Core derivative with less tested or untested features backported from and sometimes maintained outside of the core code.

Another X user asked if Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens “would stop being a thing” if the vulnerability was fixed to which Dashjr replied, “Correct.” Existing inscriptions would still remain.

"Bitcoin Core is still vulnerable in the upcoming v26 release," he said.

On Dec.

We are happy to announce testing of Bitcoin Knots v25.1 has completed successfully, and is now deployed to production.
Read more

Bitcoin Ordinals haven’t wrestled blockspace from money TXs: Glassnode

September 27, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Miners

Inscriptions have been acting more as a "packing filler," stuffed into any remaining space once higher-value monetary transfers are packed into blocks, said the firm.

Despite concerns that Bitcoin Ordinals are clogging the network, there is little evidence to suggest inscriptions are taking blockspace away from higher-value Bitcoin (BTC) monetary transfers.

“There is minimal evidence that inscriptions are displacing monetary transfers,” on-chain analytics firm Glassnode explained in a Sept. 25 report.

The firm explained that this is likely because inscription users tend to set low fee rates, expressing willingness to wait longer periods of time for confirmation.

“Inscriptions appear to be buying and consuming the cheapest available blockspace, and are readily displaced by more urgent monetary transfers.”

Bitcoin Ordinals were introduced in Feburary 2023, and have since accounted for the lion’s share of network activity when it comes to daily transaction count.

However, this hasn’t necessarily been reflected in its share of mining fees, with inscriptions only attributing to about 20% of Bitcoin transaction fees, Glassnode noted.

*Inscription fee share between images, text, audio, video and other data types on Bitcoin. Source: Glassnode.*

More inscriptions means more revenue — but there’s a catch

While inscriptions have strengthened the base-load demand for blockspace and increased fees for miners, Glassnode says Bitcoin’s hashrate has also increased 50% since February.

This has resulted in tougher competition for miners looking to swoop in on revenue fees, says Glassnode:

“With extreme miner competition in play, and the halving event looming, it is likely that miners are on the edge of income stress, with their profitability to be tested unless BTC prices increase in the near term.”

Bitcoin is currently priced at $26,216 but many industry pundits expect some degree of price appreciation in the lead-up to Bitcoin’s halving event scheduled for April 2024.

Currently, most inscriptions come as a result of BRC-20 tokens, which were introduced one month after Casey Rodamor launched the Ordinals protocol on Bitcoin in February.

On Sept. 25, Rodarmor pitched “Runes” as a potential alternative to BRC-20s, suggesting that a UTXO-based fungible token protocol wouldn’t leave as much “junk” unspent transaction outputs on the Bitcoin network.

Magazine: Blockchain games aren’t really decentralized… but that’s about to change

‘NFTs will win on Bitcoin’ — OnChainMonkey NFT collection ditches Ethereum

September 7, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Metagood CEO Danny Yang attributed the move to the Bitcoin network being seen as a more secure platform for its users, among other reasons.

The team behind nonfungible token collection OnChainMonkey is shifting its entire collection of 10,000 NFTs from Ethereum to Bitcoin, in a massive undertaking expected to take several months.

"A historical transition is on the horizon as we prepare to migrate our flagship collection, OCM Genesis, from Ethereum to Bitcoin,” Metagood co-founder and CEO Danny Yang said in a statement on Sept. 7.

The OnChainMonkeys were first launched in September 2021 on Ethereum, but Yang said the migration to Bitcoin Ordinals was due to its community seeing Bitcoin as offering a more secure platform for its users.

“The Bitcoin Ordinal protocol is better designed for decentralization and security than the Ethereum NFT protocol. High-value NFTs will win on Bitcoin.”

The proposal to migrate to Bitcoin was passed by 99% of OnChainMonkey tokenholders. Yang said this means the community had a high conviction for moving to Bitcoin.

The migration would come at a hefty cost though, with Metagood expecting to fork out over $1 million to ensure the migration process runs smoothly.

Why is the Art and Collectibles market significant for Bitcoin? Why should this matter to you?

1. Valuable Market. The wealth associated from art and collectibles by ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWIs) *alone* accounts for $1.5 TRILLION in value according to Deloitte's…
— danny huuep (@huuep) August 22, 2023

While the migration process is rather complex, each new OnChainMonkey on Bitcoin will have clear provenance to the corresponding original Ethereum NFT. Holders will receive the corresponding Bitcoin Ordinal once they’ve burned the Ethereum NFT.

However, Yang says the migration shouldn’t be too challenging compared to what Metagood has already accomplished in the Bitcoin Ordinals space:

“We were the first to inscribe 10,000 images of a collection on Bitcoin. We were the first to launch a parent-child collection with OCM Dimensions 300. We pioneered recursive inscriptions on Bitcoin, as well as inscribing Three.js and p5.js for everyone to use.”

However, Ethereum continues to dominate the NFT market, settling $236.8 million in NFTs over the last month, compared to second place Solana ($37.7 million), with Bitcoin ($11.1 million) back in sixth place, according to CryptoSlam.

At the same time, Bitcoin Ordinals transaction volumes plunged 98% between May and mid-August despite rising to popularity in early 2023.

Bitcoin Ordinals is dead.

Bitcoin is dead. We heard this many many times over the years. In the case of Bitcoin Ordinals, let's actually understand what actually is dead.

1. Bitcoin Ordinals is a new protocol at release 0.8.2. It's an early release of a protocol that still… https://t.co/NxJP7YY64y
— danny huuep (@huuep) August 19, 2023

But Yang isn’t concerned, highlighting to Cointelegraph that it is only time before a strong Bitcoin-native NFT ecosystem develops. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum NFT ecosystems can thrive, he added.

OnChainMonkey NFTs currently trade at an average floor price of 1.10 Ether (ETH) with over 20,550 ETH in transaction volume from 9,500 items since it launched on NFT marketplace OpenSea in September 2021.

Of the 2,900 owners of the OnChainMonkey NFTs, 31% are unique owners, according to OpenSea.

*List of OnChainMonkey NFTs currently traded on OpenSea. Source: OpenSea*

The arrival of Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens launched in January, which were made possible by the Taproot soft fork executed in November 2021.

Collect this article as an NFT to preserve this moment in history and show your support for independent journalism in the crypto space.

Magazine: Blockchain games aren’t really decentralized… but that’s about to change

Ordinals still make up majority of Bitcoin txs despite price collapse

August 21, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin network

Bitcoin Ordinals appear to be alive and kicking with nearly 85% of network activity dominated by inscriptions and BRC-20 minting on Aug. 21.

Ordinal inscriptions have continued to dominate activity on the Bitcoin network over the past week despite the cryptocurrency’s recent price decline and suggestions that the hype around Bitcoin NFTs have “died.”

On Aug. 21, Ordinals developer "Leonidas" pointed out that Bitcoin had 530,788 transactions over the past 24 hours, with 450,785 of those transactions being Ordinals related.

“In the midst of everyone claiming "Ordinals are dead" they have literally accounted for 84.9% of the activity on Bitcoin,” he said.

Over the past 24 hours Bitcoin had 530,788 transactions.

450,785 of those transactions were Ordinals related.

In the midst of everyone claiming "Ordinals are dead" they have literally accounted for 84.9% of the activity on Bitcoin.

You can't make this stuff up.
— Leonidas (@LeonidasNFT) August 20, 2023

Data from Dune Analytics backs up the trend as it reports that there were more than 400,000 ordinal inscriptions on Aug. 20, while Bitinfocharts reports a daily Bitcoin transaction count of around 556,000.

This means that more than three-quarters of the current network activity was Ordinals related on Aug. 20.

85% of on-chain bitcoin transactions in the past 24 hours are ordinals related

EIGHTY FIVE PERCENT

the main usecase of the bitcoin chain is ORDINALS pic.twitter.com/PCZt4if5jf
— Udi Wertheimer (@udiWertheimer) August 20, 2023

Industry researcher Eric Wall added to that, observing that over the week, 54% of the transactions on the Bitcoin network were Ordinals.

According to Dune, the total number of Ordinal inscriptions is 25.5 million which has generated $53.4 million in fees on the Bitcoin network.

Inscriptions are currently dominated by BRC-20 token minting, with 1.9 million of them minted last week.

Weekly Inscriptions by Type - Dune Analytics

The recent observations paint a different picture to a DappRadar report on Aug. 17 that claimed that Ordinals NFT usage and sales volume had tanked since its peak in May, prompting some crypto observers to declare the hype as having “died down.”

However, this hype has died down in recent months, which has likely contributed to the decline in #trading volume.
What does the future hold for #Bitcoin Ordinals NFTs?

It is unclear what the future holds for Bitcoin Ordinals NFTs.
— Cheeky Crypto (@CheekyCrypto) August 20, 2023

However, the report tracked the sales and trading volume of NFTs minted on the Bitcoin network, not the actual inscription activity which still appears to be high.

Bitcoin Ordinals are nonfungible asset artifacts that enable inscribing data onto a Satoshi, the smallest division of a Bitcoin.

The protocol was launched in January and the following months saw the inscription hype take off as thousands of them were minted on the Bitcoin network causing congestion and spikes in transaction fees which reached a peak in April and May.

Magazine: Blockchain games aren’t really decentralized… but that’s about to change

Bitcoin Ordinals rolls out upgrade to rectify ‘Cursed Inscriptions’ issue

June 5, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Previously unrecognized Ordinals inscriptions will be indexed by the protocol following the upgrade, which will allow them to be traded.

Developers behind the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol have rolled out a new upgrade that aims to cure over 71,000 invalid or “cursed” inscriptions — allowing them to be traded.

“Cursed inscriptions” was the name given to inscriptions that were created by incorrect use or intentional misuse of opcodes to create inscriptions, which led to them becoming invalid and unrecognized.

On June 4, developers, including Twitter user Raphjaph, revealed the Ordinals protocol was upgraded to version 0.6.0, which would be the first step in indexing the previously unrecognized inscriptions.

Just released a new version of ord (0.6.0), which implements the first steps in recognizing more types of inscriptions (cursed inscriptions). Additionally you can now pass in RPC credentials through command-line flags, environmental vars or a config file.https://t.co/Xi6C92cC6z
— raph (@raphjaph) June 4, 2023

The proposal to fix the issue was first s made in late April by Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor to recognize these cursed inscriptions and convert them to “blessed” ones.

The upgrade introduced support for a subset of the different types of cursed inscriptions. It does this by setting a block activation height where specific types of previously invalid inscriptions would start being indexed as normal positive inscriptions.

Ordinals influencer LeonidasNFT explained that these would be added to the list of tradable indexed Ordinals, stating:

“This is important because over 70k existing but invalid inscriptions are now supported which means that once marketplaces upgrade to v0.6.0 you will be able to start trading them.”

He added that everyone holding cursed inscriptions “should expect the negative inscription numbers to be shifted.”

Version 0.6.0 of the Ordinals Protocol just went live!

Here is everything you need to know about this major update:

Many previously unrecognized inscriptions are now indexed by the Ordinals Protocol as "Cursed Inscriptions". This is important because over 70k existing but… pic.twitter.com/Mh1pArg2p9
— Leonidas.og (@LeonidasNFT) June 4, 2023

Bitcoin Ordinals are nonfungible asset artifacts that enable inscribing data onto the smallest division of a Bitcoin, a satoshi.

The protocol was launched in January by Casey Rodarmor, and the following month saw the inscription hype take off as thousands of them were imprinted on the Bitcoin blockchain, causing congestion and spikes in transaction fees.

Ordinals inscriptions have been considered similar to NFTs regarding rarity and collectability. Users are after a unique slice of data permanently etched onto the Bitcoin blockchain so these early or converted inscriptions on satoshis could become valuable at a later period.

According to Dune Analytics, 10.8 million ordinal inscriptions have generated $45.5 million in transaction fees since the craze began earlier this year.

On May 28, Rodarmor announced he was stepping down and passing the reins to Raphjaph.

Magazine: Ordinals turned Bitcoin into a worse version of Ethereum: Can we fix it?

inscriptions

More inscriptions means more revenue — but there’s a catch

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