Ordinals: everything you need to know

Bitcoin: usually referred to as digital gold, is the first and most influential cryptocurrency in the world.

Bitcoin was seen as revolutionary from its inception but seemed to grow less and less relevant as time passed. With the introduction of smart contracts, Ethereum has since spearheaded the evolution of blockchain technology. Defi, gamefi, and NFTs are some of the use cases we’ve seen Ethereum introduce. And even with the growing popularity of these, bitcoin has stuck to sending and receiving for so long. But Bitcoin’s reputation for being stagnant changed this year. So here are all the questions we’re going to be answering today:

• What is ordinals?
• BRC-20?
• How do I get started?
• Is this really a good thing?

Let’s begin

What is Ordinals?

Ordinals is a protocol that lets people track and inscribe additional data to individual satoshis. With this protocol, people can now add different kinds of data to SATs, such as images, videos, audio, etc. A satoshi inscribed with additional data is essentially non-fungible, which makes them much like NFTS; hence, ordinals are popularly called bitcoin NFTs. There is a growing market now for these ordinal NFTs, and with the introduction of NFTs to the bitcoin ecosystem [the blockchain with the highest market cap in all of crypto], who knows what heights it could reach?

What is a satoshi?

A satoshi is the smallest unit of a bitcoin. Sort of like a cent to a dollar. There are 100,000,000 satoshis in 1 bitcoin

Why did it take so long?

There have been many attempts by developers to develop this, but they faced issues due to storage limits. But in 2021, there was an upgrade to the Bitcoin blockchain that primarily removed limits on how much data could be stored in a satoshi. It is called the Taproot upgrade, and it is what Casey Rodamor leveraged to build the Ordinals protocol.

BRC-20?

With the idea of additional data being inscribed into the satoshis, some people chose to explore the addition of smart contracts to satoshis. This could then be used to create tokens that basically act like ERC-20 tokens. This grants us the ability to create possible meme tokens and utility tokens on Bitcoin. This ERC-20 token standard drove a lot of use cases and interactions on Ethereum, and we are beginning to see it happen on Bitcoin. With the market cap for meme tokens like $PEPE and $ORDI over 30 and 100 million dollars, respectively, the adoption of BRC-20 has been a huge success.

How do I get started?

wallets:

An Ordinal wallet is a wallet that has the ability to read and write Ordinal inscriptions. There are currently 3 ordinal wallets you can use: the ordinal wallet, the Unisat wallet, and the Xverse wallet. The best for mobile users is the Xverse mobile app, which can be downloaded from your individual app stores.

BRC-20 marketplaces:

The most popular marketplace for BRC-20 tokens is the Unisat marketplace. You can also trade BRC-20 tokens on Ordinals wallet.

NFT marketplace:

You can also find an NFT marketplace in Unisat and Ordinals wallets, but there’s more. Most NFT marketplaces already support Ordinals NFTs, including giants like OpenSea, MagicEden, and Binance NFTs.

Is this really a good thing?

Bitcoin is the most secure and decentralized blockchain, in large part because of its simplicity. With innovations come vulnerabilities, and unlike most other blockchains, bitcoin cannot afford to be vulnerable. Any flow in the Bitcoin blockchain could have immense repercussions on the users, investors, and the space as a whole; hence its reluctance to innovate.

Another reason is the fact that Bitcoin was made to be a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. An introduction of a defi ecosystem can cause some inconvenience in that regard by taking up lots of block space and surging transaction fees through the roof. We are already seeing that manifest as people now have to pay ridiculous amounts as transaction fees. This is provocative to people who just want to perform peer-to-peer transactions.

I think ordinals is a good thing for Bitcoin. As much as there are risks and inconveniences to it, most of these remain speculations. And as we’ve seen in most other blockchains, there will always be a way around these inconveniences. The Development around Bitcoin seems very interesting now. With recursive and even gamefi in development, I’m genuinely excited for what Bitcoin has to offer

You can keep up with news around the ordinals space by checking out my Narrative Weekly series giving you the best news in the crypto space every week.

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