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?

Bitcoin fragments could become more valuable than full Bitcoins

May 31, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin

Collectors known as “sat hunters” are collecting satoshis from rare Bitcoin — and those fragments may eventually be worth more than regular Bitcoin.

Since January, there have been over 10 million inscriptions on the largest blockchain in the world, and this number continues to grow exponentially.

To provide some context, the Ordinals Protocol allows for the ordered identification of satoshis, the smallest subdivision of a Bitcoin (BTC), enabling each of them to have an individual identity. From that people can inscribe sats with arbitrary content, creating Bitcoin-native digital artifacts, more commonly known as nonfungible tokens (NFTs).

Among the various narratives resulting from this technique, the existence of an extremely underground group of individuals who identify, track and trade high-value historical satoshis has come to light. They are known as “sat hunters.”

There is no denying that the Bitcoin ecosystem is undergoing a period of tremendous innovation since the advent of the Ordinals Protocol in early 2023.

Their main activity involves transacting millions of BTC in search of satoshis that were present in historical moments of the crypto world.

This practice is known as “sat hunting” and can be compared to continuously withdrawing money from a bank in search of rare coins: You withdraw $10,000, keep $1 of rare coins, deposit the remaining $9,999, and repeat the process of withdrawing another $10,000 in a continuous cycle.

The group that holds the largest amount of rare satoshis is the Rare Satoshi Society, which has already traded more than $1 billion in Bitcoin volume in pursuit of these historical sats.

They are becoming well-known for providing rare satoshis for the majority of Ordinals experiments and even sold a single satoshi for 0.5 BTC.

And it’s fascinating to observe how some Ordinals projects are adopting this narrative. One example is the Nakamoto Whales project, which minted a portion of its collection into rare satoshis from the first thousand mined blocks, including one mined by Satoshi Nakamoto.

Alongside the deployment of NFTs in rare satoshis, there is also an emerging trend of historically inscribed fungible tokens (BRC-20). DAnTer, a member of the Rare Satoshi Society, recently inscribed a collection, FHAL, onto a satoshi that was mined by the legendary Hal Finney on block 78 with the purpose of democratizing access to such a historical asset for more individuals.

Now, according to DAnTer, we have entered an era where one Bitcoin is no longer equal to one Bitcoin — and a satoshi becomes equal to infinity.

And although the narrative of historical satoshis still remains underground, fungible tokens on the Bitcoin network are hotter than ever. OKX, one of the largest exchanges in the world, just announced the listing of ORDI, the largest BRC-20 token in terms of market capitalization, while OXBT, one of the most popular BRC-20 tokens, has surpassed Bored Ape Yacht Club in the seven-day volume chart — just after its launch.

In February, people were trading Ordinals using Excel spreadsheets due to the lack of infrastructure. Today, just a few months later, major exchanges are joining this movement. Big brands like Bugatti have shown interest in the rare sats narrative, and there is even discussion about smart contracts on the Bitcoin network.

Could this be the phase of the greatest innovation and onboarding in the history of Bitcoin?

Lugui Tillier is the chief commercial officer of Lumx Studios, a leading Web3 studio that counts BTG Pactual Bank, the largest investment bank in Latin America, among its investors. Lumx Studios has previous Web3 cases with Coca-Cola, AB InBev, Nestlé and Meta.

This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Zebedee Partnership With Bitnob Sees African Gamers Rewarded With BTC

April 15, 2023 Bitcoin.com

Ordinal Inscriptions Surpass 1 Million Mark, Miners Collect $4.7M in Fees as Bitcoin NFT Trend Continues

April 9, 2023 Bitcoin.com

Bitcoin’s Average and Median-Sized Network Fees Rose 40% Higher in March

March 31, 2023 Bitcoin.com

What are Bitcoin ordinals?

March 9, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Art

Bitcoin ordinals have been the most hyped-up Web3 trend of 2023 so far. How do ordinals compare to traditional NFTs, and what are the opportunities?

Ordinals vs. traditional NFTs

Ordinals are different from traditional NFTs from a technical design perspective. There are several features that make the pricing for ordinals a different exercise.

Bitcoin ordinals, as mentioned before, help identify sats uniquely and have content or art stored on-chain. Ethereum’s ERC-721 standard, which is used to create NFTs, typically holds the metadata or a pointer to the art, which is generally held off-chain. Some Ethereum NFTs are experimenting with on-chain storage, but they are more of an exception.

The other key difference with Bitcoin ordinals is the way rarity is derived and how pricing around the NFTs would work. With traditional Ethereum-based NFTs, the attributes of the art typically define the rarity of the NFT and, subsequently, its price. With NFTs like Ethereum Name Service (ENS) for instance, limited supply drives the value.

However, with Bitcoin ordinals, pricing would be defined by key moments that a Bitcoin block would represent. The first 1,000 or 10,000 ordinals inscribed might still be treasured by collectors. Don’t be surprised if the genesis Bitcoin ordinal is sold for a few million dollars in a couple of years. Yet some sats would be considered more precious than others.

A simple framework suggested by the founders of Bitcoin ordinals is that key events would decide the rarity of a sat and the ordinal inscribed into that. The first sat of every new block would be rarer than the other sats in the block. The first sat of an adjustment period that occurs approximately every two weeks would be even rarer. As the next halving is slated for 2024, the first sat of each halving epoch would add another level of rarity.

Finally, the first sat of the adjustment period, which happens once every six halvings (approximately once in 24 years), would be another level of rarity. Per the founders of this amazing innovation, this could differentiate Bitcoin ordinals from NFTs and make their rarity truly random and not controlled by the founding teams of nonfungible token collections or by their artists.

This could also help understand why the activity around Bitcoin ordinals has already peaked in the short term. It would be interesting to see how activity ramps up closer to the Bitcoin halving in 2024.

How have ordinals been perceived by the broader Bitcoin ecosystem?

Bitcoin ordinals are a great innovation that can highlight various applications unique to the chain, thereby driving developers to participate and create the tools needed by users.

Bitcoin ordinals have certainly seen a hype that potentially peaked sometime in February 2023, based on transaction data. However, the hype around the application tier on the Bitcoin blockchain is just getting started.

For instance, Stacks (STX) has seen a rise in price since the ordinals episode warmed up. It is clearly the early days for the Bitcoin ecosystem, but if developers are attracted to the chain, then the network effects between developers and users could come in time for the next crypto cycle.

However, there are downsides to the way ordinals have been designed. As the inscribed content is all on-chain with ordinals unlike with most Ethereum-based NFTs, the size of the blockchain would increase. As new applications emerge and network utilization and transactions increase, so will the cost of transactions.

The other potential impact of Bitcoin ordinals is whether it will affect the fungibility of sats. So far, satoshis have been exchanged with one sat being valued the same as another. With various applications of ordinals, this may not be true in the future. A sat with a Bitcoin Punk inscribed in it could be priced differently. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to see how this narrative evolves over the next few months and years.

How to buy, sell and trade ordinals

Much like the process of minting Bitcoin ordinals, the trading process hasn’t had the matured tooling. Yet there are a few tools to trade these digital artifacts.

As Bitcoin ordinals grow in popularity, most of the trades have been largely over-the-counter. Collections, such as “Planetary Ordinals” and “Bitcoin Punks,” among the first 1,000 inscriptions were transacted mostly without an NFT marketplace such as OpenSea or Blur.

However, tools like the Ordinals Wallet, Hiro and Xverse allow users to buy and sell Bitcoin ordinals. Users can buy some sats within the wallet, using on-ramp payment plugins, and perform the transactions to buy and sell ordinals.

The typical user journey involved in buying Bitcoin ordinals using Ordinals Wallet is as follows.

Go to ordinalswallet.com
Click on “Create Wallet”
Take a backup of the recovery phrase for your wallet
Set up a password for wallet access
Use the address of the Ordinals Wallet to send some sats to the wallet
Go to “Collections” at the top of the page
Choose the ordinals collection and the inscription that you would like to buy
Buy the ordinal (using the sats in your wallet).

How to mine Bitcoin ordinals?

Mining, minting or inscribing Bitcoin ordinals are the terms that have been used to refer to this process. Unlike minting NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, which is a relatively matured process, mining Bitcoin ordinals is a technically complex process and lacks intuitive tools.

Bitcoin ordinals, in the initial days, could only be mined by those who ran a Bitcoin node. For tech-savvy users, a Bitcoin node with the ord app, a command line wallet, would be the gateway to mining ordinals. Node operators would load their wallets with some sats to pay for the gas fees and perform an inscribing process on their ordinals.

However, no-code ordinal mining applications like the Gamma or the Ordinals Bot aim to allow users to upload the content that they want to inscribe to create their Bitcoin ordinal. The user journey takes them through a payment process using a QR code and is intuitive enough for the less technically gifted.

The tools around Bitcoin ordinals are still at a very early stage. It has only been a few months since the genesis ordinals were inscribed. As demand from ordinary users and followers increases, the ecosystem and the tooling should start maturing with more user-friendly journeys.

How do Bitcoin ordinals work?

Bitcoin ordinals are based on ordinals theory that essentially has brought life to satoshis (sats) and allows them to be treated as atomic units on the Bitcoin blockchain. Ordinals, in their simplest state, are a numbering scheme for sats.

Ordinals theory drives the mechanics behind how Bitcoin ordinals work. Ordinals theory defines satoshis (sats) as the atomic unit that can be identified and traded individually on the Bitcoin network. There are 100 million sats that make up 1 Bitcoin (BTC). Sats are numbered based on the order of mining, and this number, which uniquely identifies a sat, is an ordinal number.

By being a unit of transaction, sats can also be inscribed with digital content that make up Bitcoin ordinals. They become immutable digital collectibles that can be transacted on the Bitcoin network using Bitcoin wallets. As per ordinal theory, sats can be attached to security tokens, accounts or stablecoins using ordinal numbers as stable identifiers.

Due to the broad set of use cases that ordinals can support, Rodarmor prefers not to equate Bitcoin ordinals with NFTs. The use case of ordinals to number a sat that’s been attached to or inscribed with a JPEG can be called a nonfungible token on the Bitcoin blockchain. Although the ordinal’s use that found market fit is that of NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain, ordinals are much more than just nonfungible tokens.

What are Bitcoin NFTs?

Bitcoin NFTs — aka Bitcoin ordinals, aka digital artifacts — are a way to inscribe digital content on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The Bitcoin ordinals protocol was launched in January 2023 by Casey Rodarmor. The protocol allows inscribing of digital content like art onto the Bitcoin blockchain. Unlike nonfungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum and other blockchains, Rodarmor wanted to create an immutable on-chain presence of a piece of art, text or video. The genesis ordinal was a pixel art of a skull that Rodarmor inscribed on Dec. 14, 2022.

As the NFT space based on Ethereum’s ERC-721 standard skyrocketed in 2021, Rodarmor, who was a programmer and an artist, saw the opportunity to create a similar yet unique experience on the Bitcoin blockchain. His solution was Bitcoin ordinals, based on ordinal theory, which he went on to implement through 2022.

Ordinal theory concerns itself with satoshis, giving them individual identities and allowing them to be tracked, transferred and imbued with meaning. The ordinals hype really kicked off in February 2023, six weeks after the genesis ordinal was created.

The number of inscriptions doubled every week for a few weeks. However, the number could have been much higher if the infrastructure to inscribe and trade ordinals had been better planned and executed.

Daily inscriptions by type

The rise of Bitcoin ordinals has seen the Bitcoin network explode in terms of usage, fees and storage space as shown in the chart above. This may also be the first big breakthrough for the Bitcoin application tier and can help move the narrative from a pure “store of value” to something more utilitarian.

Xapo Bank Integrates Lightning Network Payments Through Lightspark Partnership

March 2, 2023 Bitcoin.com

Bitcoin’s Blockchain Growth Accelerates With Trend of Ordinal Inscriptions

February 28, 2023 Bitcoin.com

Bitcoin-Based NFTs Cross 200,000 Ordinal Inscriptions, Yuga Labs Launches Twelvefold Collection

February 28, 2023 Bitcoin.com

Nifty News: Bitcoin NFTs cause spicy fees, Mastercard exec tokenizes resignation letter and more

February 3, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin NFTs

Users are posting massive files to the Bitcoin network via the Ordinals protocol, taking up block space and paying high fees to do so.

Bitcoin Ordinals causes fees to spike

The Bitcoin (BTC)-native Ordinals protocol is taking up record-breaking space on the blockchain and in the process is hiking the transaction fees on the network.

The divisive newly launched protocol allows for nonfungible token (NFT)-esque assets on the Bitcoin mainnet by inscribing satoshis with content.

So far, inscriptions have included content such as images, documents including a PDF file of the Bitcoin whitepaper and even a fully playable clone of the video game DOOM.

*The 31.2 kilobyte DOOM clone (pictured) will now forever be playable on Bitcoin. Image:* *Ordinals*

On Feb. 2, independent developer, Udi Wertheimer, tweeted he had conducted the “largest transaction in Bitcoin’s history” after using the Ordinals protocol to inscribe a 3.94-megabyte image of a sunglass-wearing, bald, bearded wizard lauding “magic internet JPEGs.”

Last night, we made history

The gatekeepers tried to censor us

But we mined the LARGEST BLOCK and LARGEST TRANSACTION IN BITCOIN’S HISTORY

Special thanks to bitcoin full node operators for supporting our efforts and hosting our 4MB NFT for all eternity!

gm @TaprootWizards ‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/uKGG918af8
— Udi Wertheimer (@udiWertheimer) February 2, 2023

The data size of these inscribed transactions are much more than those typically conducted on the blockchain and as a result have driven up the fees associated with processing them.

Typical Bitcoin transactions can cost a few cents to a few dollars, but Ordinals can cost tens of dollars in comparison.

Figures from crypto-mining data provider Hashrate Index show over the past seven days fees as a percentage of the block reward are on the rise starting off the week at around 1% before jumping to a Feb. 1 weekly high of 6.74%.

Mastercard’s NFT lead quits on bad terms, sells resignation letter as NFT

The now-former NFT product lead at payments giant Mastercard left the company in a spectacular fashion, publicly slamming the firm for purportedly mistreating him and offering up his resignation letter as an NFT.

In a Feb. 2 Twitter thread, Satvik Sethi claimed Mastercard cut his salary by 40% when he moved from New York City to London claiming he “had to work side jobs this past year to make ends meet.”

I have resigned from @Mastercard.

For the past year, I served as the ‘NFT Product Lead.’ I evangelized Web3 for Mastercard leadership & regional teams, as well as all our Fortune 500 clients & partners.

This wasn’t easy but read on for why it was necessary, and what’s next : pic.twitter.com/kqiavsSIW7
— Satvik Sethi (@sxtvik) February 2, 2023

He claimed that at times he would not receive his salary “until I begged across the hierarchy for it.”

Sethi also alleged he was the victim of harassment “caused by a series of mismanaged processes, miscommunication [and] internal inefficiency.”

He asked his over 22,000 Twitter followers for their support by minting his resignation letter for 0.023 Ether (ETH), worth around $37.

“100% of this goes to survival,” Sethi added as he will lose his British work visa and would “be based in India for the foreseeable future.” A future airdrop of art for holders of the NFT was also promised by Sethi.

At the time of writing 53 NFTs of the letter, which Sethi titled “New Beginnings” had been minted.

Cointelegraph contacted Mastercard for comment regarding Sethi’s allegations but did not immediately receive a response.

eBay eyes talent for its acquired NFT marketplace

E-commerce player eBay is looking to hire several Web3-related roles for its United Kingdom-based NFT marketplace KnownOrigin which it acquired in June 2022.

Job postings by eBay on LinkedIn revealed its hiring for positions in the U.K. and at its headquarters in California.

Among the roles are a Manchester-based Head of Community for KnownOrigin along with a Content Designer and Marketing Campaign Executive for the marketplace amongst other positions.

The firm is also hiring two California-based positions for a Crypto Counsel. The job description says the role will see a “creative crypto attorney” joining eBay’s legal team to support its “business, product, compliance and technology teams in the Web3 space.”

OpenSea rolls out suite of tools for NFT creators

NFT marketplace OpenSea released the next series of tools for its “Drops” feature which is used to help creators launch NFT collections with OpenSea to benefit from its reach.

In a Feb. 2 Twitter thread, OpenSea said it had worked closely with 20 teams to “build a best-in-class drops experience.”

We’re excited to start rolling out the next phase ofDrops on OpenSeaa product we’ve been working on for the past few months! https://t.co/rRydH289Vq ⬇️
— OpenSea (@opensea) February 2, 2023

The next phase of the rollout includes giving creators tools allowing them to conduct multi-stage minting, smart contract deployment across multiple Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains and personalize web landing pages among other features.

The tool will be “gradually opening up” to select creators “over the coming weeks” according to OpenSea.

It will also add more features in the coming weeks before it’s released to the public at large.

OpenSea has experimented with its Drops feature by creating personalized pages for select collections, most notably, one was created for the debut collection by actor Sir Anthony Hopkins which ended up selling out in under 10 minutes.

Other Nifty News:

Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, said there are “various possibilities for using Web3” in the country, and the government may use NFTs and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to promote its “Cool Japan” strategy aiming to show off the nation's tech and culture.

Cointelegraph spoke with industry professionals on how to prevent NFT thefts who advised users to take due diligence, revoke unnecessary permissions and segregate NFTs into different wallets among other measures.

satoshis