Bitcoin is having its main character moment, and it's savoring every minute of it.

We saw the explosion of BRC-20, wizards at BTC Miami, and even DeGods on the orange chain. Is Bitcoin finally moving beyond its status as digital gold?

What I find interesting about this recent explosive interest is that it parallels to what had propelled Ethereum into mainstream consciousness: NFTs.

Just as CryptoKitties, BAYC, and Punks allowed NFTs to become a household term, Ordinals are once again ushering Bitcoin into the limelight. Love them or hate them, NFTs are the most important drivers in crypto interest and awareness.

Until 2023, Bitcoin NFTs weren’t really a thing. This all changed when software engineer casey Rodarmor launched the ordinals protocol, which enables users to inscribe up to 4 MB of data onto a Bitcoin block (originally 1 MB).

Using Ordinal Theory, a way to number each individual satoshi (smallest individual unit of Bitcoin), users can now create Bitcoin NFTs. The contents within these Ordinals are known as inscriptions, which can be an image, audio, text, etc.

Similarly to how Ordinal Theory enables JPEGs, video, or audio to be inscribed to satoshis, so are BRC-20 tokens. An anon developer launched this new experimental token standard on March 9, 2023. A sharp contrast to other popular EVM chains is BRC-20 does not require smart contracts. Instead, users store a JSON script file on Bitcoin, which assign token to individual satoshis.

Although they are easier to create on the Bitcoin blockchain, they are more limited than ERC-20 tokens, which pack in greater programmability.

There are three important distinctions between Ordinals NFTs and Ethereum NFTs:

Data Storage

Due to block size limits and blockchain storage limits, most NFT metadata is stored either on centralized servers (e.g AWS) or distributed storage systems like IPFS. Ordinals data are stored fully on-chain, which leads us to the second point and third point

Immutability

Once inscribed, Ordinals are immutable. This means users cannot go back and tamper with metadata - what the NFT looks like during inscription will remain the same forever.

No Smart Contracts

In Ethereum, NFTs are created via deploying smart contracts. There’s also dynamic NFTs (ERC-1155), which allow for changes in NFTs (appearance, behaviors, etc) in response to external events and embedded code in the smart contracts.

There’s also been arguments that because Ordinals do not use smart contracts, users are not exposed to smart contract vulnerabilities and hacks:

In the next article, we look at how to inscribe an Ordinal and some trending Bitcoin Ordinals in the current market.

Bitcoin is having its main character moment, and it's savoring every minute of it.

We saw the explosion of BRC-20, wizards at BTC Miami, and even DeGods on the orange chain. Is Bitcoin finally moving beyond its status as digital gold?

What I find interesting about this recent explosive interest is that it parallels to what had propelled Ethereum into mainstream consciousness: NFTs.

Just as CryptoKitties, BAYC, and Punks allowed NFTs to become a household term, Ordinals are once again ushering Bitcoin into the limelight. Love them or hate them, NFTs are the most important drivers in crypto interest and awareness.

Until 2023, Bitcoin NFTs weren’t really a thing. This all changed when software engineer casey Rodarmor launched the ordinals protocol, which enables users to inscribe up to 4 MB of data onto a Bitcoin block (originally 1 MB).

Using Ordinal Theory, a way to number each individual satoshi (smallest individual unit of Bitcoin), users can now create Bitcoin NFTs. The contents within these Ordinals are known as inscriptions, which can be an image, audio, text, etc.

Similarly to how Ordinal Theory enables JPEGs, video, or audio to be inscribed to satoshis, so are BRC-20 tokens. An anon developer launched this new experimental token standard on March 9, 2023. A sharp contrast to other popular EVM chains is BRC-20 does not require smart contracts. Instead, users store a JSON script file on Bitcoin, which assign token to individual satoshis.

Although they are easier to create on the Bitcoin blockchain, they are more limited than ERC-20 tokens, which pack in greater programmability.

There are three important distinctions between Ordinals NFTs and Ethereum NFTs:

Data Storage

Due to block size limits and blockchain storage limits, most NFT metadata is stored either on centralized servers (e.g AWS) or distributed storage systems like IPFS. Ordinals data are stored fully on-chain, which leads us to the second point and third point

Immutability

Once inscribed, Ordinals are immutable. This means users cannot go back and tamper with metadata - what the NFT looks like during inscription will remain the same forever.

No Smart Contracts

In Ethereum, NFTs are created via deploying smart contracts. There’s also dynamic NFTs (ERC-1155), which allow for changes in NFTs (appearance, behaviors, etc) in response to external events and embedded code in the smart contracts.

There’s also been arguments that because Ordinals do not use smart contracts, users are not exposed to smart contract vulnerabilities and hacks:

In the next article, we look at how to inscribe an Ordinal and some trending Bitcoin Ordinals in the current market.