Following the success of Counterparty’s Rare Pepes and operation code Easter eggs, the latest version of NFTs on Bitcoin, Ordinals, has emerged in the market, leading to Bitcoin becoming the second most popular blockchain for NFTs globally, with Ethereum retaining its position as the most popular blockchain overall.
Over the past 30 days, Ethereum has processed on-chain NFT transactions worth $390 million, while Bitcoin is approaching nearly half that amount; in contrast, Solana recorded $49 million in NFT transactions during the same period, while Bitcoin witnessed a transaction volume of $173 million.
It would have been difficult to anticipate that Bitcoin would process nearly half the number of NFT transactions as Ethereum a few months ago. Ethereum has been the clear frontrunner in this regard, having processed almost 38 million NFT transactions since its inception, which is significantly higher than Bitcoin’s 320,000.
Despite Ethereum’s dominance, the surge in popularity of Ordinals has led to the oldest blockchain in the world, Bitcoin, being used for diverse purposes such as storing works of art, movies, collectibles, tickets, and video games securely.
The Ordinals protocol is a system that leverages wallet software other than Bitcoin Core to serialize the smallest unit of Bitcoin’s currency, the satoshi. Casey Rodamor, a former Bitcoin Core engineer, invested a year in developing his personal “ordwallet” program, which involved coding and debugging.
Similar to the serial numbers imprinted on banknotes, the order numbers in Ordinals hold a unique significance, with certain rare bills carrying a higher numismatic value despite having a minimum value of $1.
Although Ordinals are primarily of interest to explorers and NFT merchants, they have generated substantial transaction fees for miners.
