Original author: alertcat.eth, ChainCatcher
To judge the recent tipping point of NFT, the NFT boom brought about by the Ordinal protocol on the Bitcoin mainnet cannot be ignored. Although the current Bitcoin network does not have a mature trading platform, and all transactions rely on a spreadsheet as the basis for pending orders and offers, recently transactions based on the Ordinal protocol are still very active, and even cause congestion on the Bitcoin network.
According to crypto analytics platform Glassnode, the launch of Bitcoin NFTs has pushed the number of non-zero Bitcoin addresses to an all-time high of 44 million, “This is a new and unique moment in Bitcoin history where an innovation is generating network activities without the classic transfer of token transactions for monetary purposes.”
In view of its influence that cannot be ignored, this article willFrom the technical principles of the Ordinal protocol and its ecological impactTwo aspects to analyze the development status of Bitcoin NFT.
First of all, let’s start with Bitcoin itself. The smallest divisible unit of Bitcoin is called Satoshi, and one Bitcoin is equivalent to 100 million Satoshi. Ordinal theory gives financial value to Satoshi, allowing them to be collected and traded as collectibles. A single Satoshi can be inscribed with arbitrary content, creating unique Bitcoin-native digital artifacts that can be kept in Bitcoin wallets and transferred using Bitcoin transactions. Inscription is as durable, immutable, secure and decentralized as Bitcoin itself.
In a BIP created by Bitcoin Core contributor Casey on February 2, the technical principle of ordinal numbers is described as follows: "Each satoshi is numbered consecutively starting from 0 in the order in which it was mined. These numbers are called "ordinal numbers" because they is an ordinal number in the mathematical sense, giving the order of each satoshi in the total supply. The term "ordinal number" is very specific as it is not used elsewhere in the Bitcoin protocol. Based on the size and order of transaction inputs and outputs, Transfer the serial number Satoshi from the transaction input to the output Satoshi in FIFO order."
Each block on the Bitcoin blockchain contains one or more transactions, the first of which is called a coinbase transaction. In ordinal protocols, coinbase transactions are considered to have an implicit input equal to the size of the subsidy for the purposes of the allocation algorithm. Then the principle of transfer is: Satoshi transfers money in the order of first in first out. Think of a transaction's input as a list of satoshis, and the output as a list of slots, waiting to receive satoshis. To assign input satoshis to slots, check each satoshi in the input in order and assign each satoshi to the first available slot in the output. Transaction fees are treated as additional inputs to coinbase transactions and are ordered according to how their corresponding transactions are ordered in the block.
In the ordinal protocol, inscriptions are inscribed with arbitrary content, creating digital artefacts native to Bitcoin, often referred to as NFTs. Inscription does not require sidechains or separate tokens. These inscribed Satoshis can then be transferred using a Bitcoin transaction, sent to a Bitcoin address, and held in a Bitcoin UTXO. These transactions, addresses, and UTXOs are in all respects normal Bitcoin transactions, addresses, and UTXOs, except that in order to send a single satoshi, transactions must control the order and values of inputs and outputs according to ordinal number theory. Inscription's content model conforms to the web protocol. An inscription consists of a content type (also known as a MIME type) and the content itself, the latter being a string. This allows the inscription content to be returned from a web server and used to create, use and remix other The HTML inscription for the inscription content.
This is the same data model used by the internet, allowing inscription content to evolve with the network and support any type of content supported by a web browser without changing the underlying protocol. Inscription content is entirely on-chain, stored in the taproot script-path spend script. Taproot scripts have few restrictions on their content, and additionally receive witness discounts, making inscription content storage relatively economical.
Since taproot spend scripts can only be spawned from existing taproot output, a two-phase commit/display process is used for inscription. First, in a commit transaction, create a commit to the taproot output of the script containing the inscription content. Second, in revealing the transaction, the output generated by the submitted transaction is used to reveal the content of the inscription on the chain. Inscription content is serialized using data pushes in unexecuted conditions, called "envelopes".
The envelope consists of OP_FALSE OP_IF ... OP_ENDIF wrapping any number of data pushes. Because envelopes are effectively no-ops, they do not change the semantics of the script that contains them, and can be combined with any other locking script. According to the protocol, a textual inscription containing the string "Hello, world!" is serialized as follows:
OP_FALSE
OP_IF
OP_PUSH "ord"
OP_ 1
OP_PUSH "text/plain;charset=utf-8"
OP_ 0
OP_PUSH "Hello, world!"
OP_ENDIF
The string ord is first pressed to disambiguate the inscription from other uses of the envelope. OP_ 1 indicates that the next push contains the content type, and OP_ 0 indicates that subsequent data pushes contain the content itself. Large inscriptions must use multiple data pushes, because one of the few restrictions of taproot is that a single data push cannot be larger than 520 bytes. The inscription content is included in the input of the reveal transaction, and the inscription is made on the first satoshi of its first output. This satoshi can then be tracked using the familiar rules of ordinal number theory, allowing it to be transferred, bought, sold, lost and recovered. This is the technical principle of Bitcoin NFT writing data on Satoshi.
The founder defines the properties that an inscription should have, which is why he created this protocol:
For a digital thing to be a digital artifact, it has to be like that coin of yours:
Digital artifacts can have owners. A number is not a digital artifact because no one else can own it.
Digital artifacts are complete. NFTs pointing to off-chain content on IPFS or Arweave are incomplete and therefore not digital artifacts.
Digital artifacts are license-free. NFTs that cannot be sold without paying royalties are not unlicensed and therefore not digital artefacts.
Digital artifacts are not censorable. Maybe you can change a database entry on a centralized ledger today, but maybe not tomorrow, so it can't be a digital artifact.
Digital artifacts are immutable. NFTs with upgrade keys are not digital artifacts.
The definition of a digital artifact is intended to reflect what an NFT should be, and sometimes is, and what an inscription has always been, by its very nature. The founders see the Ordinal Protocol and Inscription as a love letter to Bitcoin, the Internet, programming, and the World Wide Web. In general: the author of the protocol needs an on-chain, immutable, Bitcoin-based network security, does not support mandatory royalties, and can open new markets for Bitcoin maxi, with the same The Ordinal protocol was created based on the NFT protocol of the data model.
The authors of the protocol simultaneously completed a block explorer, a wallet with manually selectable satoshis to send, called the ord wallet, and an index. If you want to create an inscription, you need to download both the Bitcoin Core wallet and the ord wallet to complete the control satoshi and select satoshi. Inscription is a kind of NFT, but the founders prefer to use the term digital artifact because of its simplicity, inspiration and familiarity.
The following introduces several well-known NFT series and infrastructure based on the serial number protocol.
Ordinal Punks
The NFTs that make up the Ordinal Punks collection were minted on the first 650 inscriptions on the Bitcoin network. The Ordinal Punks NFT Punk 94 sold for 9.5 BTC late Wednesday, or roughly $214,000, according to a tweet.
Bitcoin Punks
Bitcoin Punks is the first to perfectly upload raw Ethereum CryptoPunks bytes to the Bitcoin blockchain using Ordinals.
The project checked the hash of each image uploaded to Ordinals and compared it to the original 10k punk image. The link to Bitcoin Punks is the first inscription (lowest ID) that contains these hashes on Ordinals.
market
This website creates a mapping of Bitcoin Punks on Ethereum, so that buyers can easily buy Bitcoin Punks on opensea.The project party through the Emblem VaultHelp buyers avoid scams by providing verified and up-to-date information on all legitimate Bitcoin Punks.
The emerging Ordinal protocol has undoubtedly had an impact on the Bitcoin ecosystem. The creators of the ordinal protocol characterize it this way: The most important thing the Bitcoin network does is decentralize money. All other use cases are secondary, including ordinal number theory. The developers of Ordinal Number Theory understand and acknowledge this, and believe that Ordinal Number Theory contributes to Bitcoin's primary mission, at least in a small way. There is a huge divide within the Bitcoin community over the development and application of the technology, with some purists arguing that the blockchain should be limited to financial transactions, arguing that the popularity of the ordinal protocol has increased the average block overnight. size, which translates into higher per-block fees.
According to the diagram below: Due to the increased block space usage brought about by inscriptions, the mempool is the collection of Bitcoin blocks waiting to be mined and added to the blockchain, at the time of writingis now full.
Some worry that recording irreplaceable data on the blockchain could lead to bloat, while othersPoint out the popularity of the ordinal protocolIt is a positive catalyst that will promote more development of the blockchain.
Here's what the protocol's author said to the Bitcoin community, which I see as a defense of its ecological impact: "Unlike many other things in the altcoin space, digital artefacts have their merits. Of course, there are tons of NFTs that are ugly." Stupid and fraudulent. Yet there are many very creative things, creating and collecting art has been part of the human story from the beginning, predating even trade and money, and it's also ancient technology.
Bitcoin provides an amazing platform for creating and collecting digital artifacts in a secure, decentralized manner, protecting users and artists in the same way it provides an amazing platform for sending and receiving value, and for For the same reason.
Ordinals and inscriptions increase the demand for Bitcoin block space, which increases Bitcoin's security budget, which is critical to securing Bitcoin's transition to a fee-dependent security model as the block subsidy halving becomes trivial.
Inscription content is stored on-chain, so the block space requirements used by inscriptions are unlimited. This creates a buyer of last resort for all Bitcoin block space. This will help support a robust fee market, ensuring Bitcoin remains safe.
The inscription also counters the claim that Bitcoin cannot scale or be used for new use cases. If you follow projects like DLC, Fedimint, Lightning, Taro, and RGB, you know this claim is false, but Inscription offers an easy-to-understand counter-argument for a popular and proven use case of NFTs, which makes It's very clear.
If inscriptions become the highly sought-after digital artifacts with a rich history, as the authors hope, they will be a powerful hook for Bitcoin adoption: come for the fun, rich art, stay for the decentralized digital currency .
Inscriptions are an extremely benign source of block space requirements. For example, stablecoins may give large stablecoin issuers the ability to influence the future of Bitcoin development, or DeFi may centralize mining by introducing opportunities for MEV, digital art, and collectibles on Bitcoin, unlikely to generate enough power Individual entities destroying Bitcoin. Art is decentralized.
Inscription users and service providers are incentivized to run Bitcoin full nodes, issue and track Inscriptions, thereby throwing their economic weight towards the Honest Chain.
Ordinal theory and inscriptions do not have a meaningful impact on Bitcoin's fungibility. Bitcoin users can ignore both without being affected.
references
references
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/bitcoin-nfts-protocol-ordinals-50000-inscriptions
https://docs.ordinals.com/faq.html
