Bitcoin Ordins look to be on the rise and taking over the heyday of Web3. The market has been buzzing since software engineer Casey Rodarmor unveiled the protocol on Jan. 21. However, user reactions have been mixed, with some excited about the new upgrade and others rejecting their orders entirely.
Despite its notoriety, at the time of this writing there are 90,000 ordinal numbers in existence. So why are ordinal numbers so difficult to accept? The vast majority of people simply don’t know how to buy them, let alone create them. The barrier to entry is higher, which means there are plenty of potential deep dives. But it also means more risk.If you are ready to take this opportunity and seize the potential of Ordinals, here it is Bitcoin Magazine Here’s how to find, buy and store them safely. First, we need to figure out what is a Bitcoin ordinal?
What are Bitcoin ordinal numbers?
Ordinals is a protocol created by former Bitcoin developer Casey Rodarmor. If NFT on Ethereum has its own token standard ERC-721 or ERC-1155, Bitcoin NFT does not have these standards.
Since each NFT is minted on one Satoshi (1 BTC = 100,000,000 Satoshi), 1 Bitcoin can generate up to 100,000,000 Bitcoin NFTs. These NFTs are traceable, transferable, and work natively on Bitcoin without requiring a Layer 2 solution. Even more striking, these NFTs are hosted entirely on the Bitcoin network, not on servers, unlike most NFTs on the market. Ordinals also take advantage of Bitcoin’s SegWit 2017 upgrade and Bitcoin’s 2021 Taproot upgrade, a technology that helps the network get authenticated faster.
SegWit helped scale Bitcoin by developing a new data field in each block to contain “certificate data” — including signatures and public keys for Bitcoin transactions. However, the potential risks of this technique limited Bitcoin’s block size at the time. At the same time, Taproot was born to solve the SegWit vulnerability, cancel the block size limit, and pave the way for the storage of NFT data on a large blockchain.
Therefore, the new Ordinals protocol allows operators of Bitcoin nodes to write data to each sat, creating so-called Ordinals. Data recorded on Bitcoin can include smart contracts, which in turn makes NFTs possible. Roughly speaking, Ordinals are NFTs that you can mint directly onto the Bitcoin blockchain. To create Bitcoin NFTs, the community uses the term “writing,” as each NFT is created through the process of etching a picture into the smallest part of a bitcoin, called a satoshi.
That’s not quite right, but it’s the most succinct explanation. Of course, you need to understand some important differences between NFTs and ordinal numbers.
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How are Ordinals different from NFTs?
NFTs on Ethereum typically point to off-chain data on IPFS — a decentralized file storage system, much like a blockchain’s hard drive — that can be changed using dynamic metadata. Some NFT projects update each NFT’s metadata to improve image quality, and may even require the owner to hit a “refresh metadata” button on OpenSea to get new, higher-quality images.
This NFT’s ability to change metadata hints at a shortcoming that Rodarmor was trying to improve upon when creating the new protocol. In Rodarmor’s estimation, NFTs are “incomplete” due to many off-chain data requirements.
Sequence numbers, on the other hand, are “complete” because all data is written directly on-chain. That’s why Rodarmor calls them digital artefacts, not Bitcoin NFTs. Additionally, NFTs often come with creator royalties, while digital artifacts do not. According to Rodarmor, an Ordinal was created to reflect what an NFT should be, what it has sometimes been, and what the nature of the inscription has always been.
1. Buy the right wallet
Get a bitcoin wallet that allows enough customization to receive a serial number inscription. @ sparrow wallet Fits that bill.
– First, go to Sparrow Wallet.
– Click the download link associated with your computer’s operating system.
— nft now (@nftnow) February 13, 2023
The Environmental Impact of Bitcoin Ordinal Numbers
The energy consumption of the blockchain is considerable. Bitcoin is the largest blockchain in the world by market cap. Additionally, Bitcoin uses a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to verify transactions and add them to the chain, which is a very energy-intensive process. Due to its size and PoW consensus mechanism, Bitcoin is far ahead of other blockchains in terms of energy consumption.
In August 2022, a US government report estimated that Bitcoin uses 60-77% of electricity. How big would that number be if converted to energy? Difficult to know for sure, but reports from Digiconomist suggest that the combined energy usage of Bitcoin and Ethereum (before the Ethereum merger in September 2022) consumes more than 317 terawatt-hours of energy per year, equivalent to the electricity used in Italy and the UK volume until 2022.
Many companies and industries consume more energy than countries. Blockchain is not unique in this regard. Ultimately, Bitcoin’s energy consumption ranks at the bottom of the big mining industries like copper and zinc. Bitcoin’s total annual energy consumption is also far less than the global demand for residential air conditioning units, and less than the energy demand of global data centers (look at Apple, Google, and Amazon).
Before you say that artists should go back and make a living selling their artwork on T-shirts, note that, according to Princeton University’s Ngan Le, “the fashion industry is now responsible for carbon emissions.” More than all international flights each year and Shipping combined. “
Of course, this is not to say that blockchain and NFT have no impact on the environment. But harsh criticisms are often exaggerated and lack the necessary context.
The most famous collection of ordinal numbers
The Cardinal’s rise did not take long. In the first few weeks of their launch, the collections have taken off, with huge sales, with some items fetching hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Ordinal Punks is one of the most notable projects that came out early. In homage to CryptoPunks, Ordinal Punks is a set of 100 Bitcoin NFTs minted among the first 650 inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain — the highest numbered inscription in the series occupying position 642.
Then we have to mention Taproot Wizards. Starting with Text #652, this project is an Ordinal collection of hand-drawn NFT wizards created by Web3 developer Udi Wertheimer. Why is this project getting so much attention? This is said to be the largest block in the history of Bitcoin, with a capacity of a staggering 4MB, which is 4 times higher than the usual 1MB limit. As expected, almost the entire block size is taken up by transactions containing NFTized images. This is claimed to be the largest Bitcoin block in history and the heaviest Bitcoin transaction in history.
For those who have yet to harness the power of the omniscient gaze of a full node, you can find a guide here, on the largest Bitcoin block ever:https://t.co/Iv6SOA7wSr pic.twitter.com/v8wZ1FGnEa
— Luxor Mining (@LuxorTechTeam) February 1, 2023
Next up is OnChainMonkey (OCM), an Ethereum-based collective. With Inscription 20,219, the team minted 10,000 Ordinals into an Inscription, making it one of the first series of 10,000 Ordinals on Bitcoin. The OCM team noticed that the size of the inscription was less than 20,000 bytes. This makes their method a scalable model for other collectibles, allowing NFTs to be created on Bitcoin without clogging the network.
However, episcopal inscriptions are still in their infancy. As the Ordinals market matures, we may see many other innovative collections emerge.
How to Buy and Trade Serial Numbers
- Step One: Choose the Right Wallet
You cannot yet keep Ordinals in browser wallets like MetaMask. You have to set up a bitcoin wallet that allows enough customization to receive the usual inscriptions. Sparrow is currently a fairly suitable choice.
- Step 2: Set up your wallet
Sparrow Wallet is a desktop application and requires some preparation to be compatible with Ordinals.After downloading sparrow, follow it Detailed description This creates an Ordinals-compatible wallet on Github. Note, however, that you should not send BTC to or from this Ordirals wallet. This wallet is only used to receive orders. If you send BTC from this new Ordinals wallet, you may accidentally send BTC and Ordinals at the same time.
Now that you have your wallet set up, you can receive serial numbers in three ways:
- Run a node and write an Ordinals manually
- Find Ordinals owners and buy directly from them.
Use a service to burn ordinals without running your own node.
We won’t go into the technical details of running a Bitcoin node. Let’s focus on the other two options, keeping in mind that this is new and fraught with risk. There is currently no major market for Ordinals, so this needs to be done very carefully.
- Step 3a: Find the serial number to buy
The Ordinals market is purely OTC.
- Find regular projects and join the channel Discord command.
- Go to your channel, link your items, and see what items are there.
- Choose your favorite serial number and buy
One important note: buying Ordinals OTC will require you to connect with someone on Discord, make a deposit before receiving the Ordinal, make live trades with other people, etc. Just remember to do your research carefully and choose reputable sellers. And be careful, only risk money you can trade.
- Step 3b: Use the service to record the ordinal number for you
If you want to create your own Ordinals but don’t want to run a Bitcoin node, use an alternative service to burn Ordinals for you.
- The Satoshibles NFT Ordinals team created the Ordinals Bot which will rate Ordinals on your behalf.
- Gamma also has an Ordinals recording service
These services will ask you to provide the BTC address where you would like to receive the serial number. You will use the address from the new Ordinals wallet you created in Sparrow. They will also give you the amount of sats you owe the transaction along with the service fee, and the address you sent the BTC to. Transaction amounts can range from less than $50 BTC to several hundred dollars, depending on the size of your files. Usually, it takes several hours or days to receive your order after depositing.
boring, adventurous, full of potential
As you can see, if you want to get a head start in the serial number market, you’re going to have to string together tedious tasks to make it happen. But the opportunity might be worth it. Be careful as you venture forward and find out what you are facing.
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mango
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