Having first been introduced in January, Bitcoin Ordinals have played a pivotal role in steering the narrative of NFTs and smart contracts towards the Bitcoin blockchain, even in South Africa’s blossoming crypto scene.
Bitcoin Ordinals and the broader NFT sector have experienced an impressive resurgence following the launch of the BRC-69 token standard. This uptick has been quantified through data from blockchain analytics firm Glassnode, which reveals that the number of new inscriptions rocketed past the 350,000 mark on Monday.
This considerable surge – over 250% since the initiation of Ordinals launchpad Luminex’s Bitcoin Request for Comment (BRC)-69 token standard on July 3 – has provided an invigorating boost to the Bitcoin NFT environment. The BRC-69 token standard, a modified variant of the BRC-20 standard, was introduced with the explicit aim of curtailing the cost of inscriptions for Ordinals by over 90%.
Luminex elucidated on Twitter how this cost reduction is achieved via a four-step process that involves inscribing traits, deploying collections, compiling collections, and minting assets. The effectiveness of BRC69 is based on its simplicity, with minters only required to inscribe a single line of text rather than a full image. This text subsequently enables the final image to be automatically rendered on all ordinals-frontends, exclusively utilizing on-chain resources due to recursive inscriptions.
Thus far, it appears that BRC-69 has indeed delivered on its cost-saving promise. Dune Analytics data shows that while the quantity of new inscriptions has significantly spiked, the daily fees paid for inscriptions have remained relatively constant.
January’s launch of Ordinals brought the narrative of NFTs and smart contracts to the Bitcoin blockchain, subsequently generating investor interest in tokens like STX, the native token of Bitcoin layer 2 Stacks Network. This has also been a talking point in South Africa’s cryptocurrency discourse.
Glassnode divides the Ordinals boom into two distinct waves: the first wave spans from early February to late April, driven by image-based inscriptions. The second wave, starting in May, has been characterized by high fee-paying text-based inscriptions.
In conclusion, the recent Bitcoin NFT surge underpinned by Ordinals provides a fascinating case study for South African investors and the wider global crypto community. As Bitcoin continues to broaden its scope, the continued evolution of NFTs and Ordinals will undoubtedly remain a captivating space to observe.
