The world of Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions has seen a recent revival in activity, leading to a significant increase in inscription transactions. CryptoMode explores the reasons behind this resurgence and how it reshapes the cryptocurrency landscape.
A Resurgence in Bitcoin Ordinal Inscriptions
On April 25th, the leading on-chain analytics platform Glassnode reported on the growing trend of Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions. After a brief decline, the daily inscription transaction count experienced a sharp upswing, culminating in a record-breaking 193,000 inscriptions minted in a single day on April 23rd.
Approximately 40% of all Bitcoin transactions on that day were associated with an inscription file. The subsequent day saw around 85,000 inscriptions, marking the third-highest day on record.
Most Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions on the record-breaking day were text inscriptions, which continue to dominate transactions. Image inscriptions, although initially more popular, have since taken a backseat.
Glassnode highlighted that the proportion of total block size associated with inscriptions has decreased, primarily due to the increased popularity of text-based inscriptions. As a result, text inscriptions have a significantly smaller data footprint compared to their image counterparts.
Analyzing the Composition of Ordinal Inscriptions
On April 24th, Ord.io reported a total of 1.52 million ordinal inscriptions, with 56% being text-based. Image inscriptions constituted the second-largest share at around 40%, while the remaining inscriptions included JSON, HTML, PDF, and video files.
In contrast, Dune Analytics reported 1.73 million inscriptions, with over one million being plain text. Dune Analytics also revealed that the total fees for ordinal inscriptions amounted to 184 BTC, or approximately $5 million.
Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions are crypto assets similar to non-fungible tokens (NFTs). They can be inscribed into one Satoshi, the smallest denomination of a Bitcoin.
The inscribing process involves writing additional data of the content stored into the “witness” of the Bitcoin transaction. The witness was introduced with the SegWit upgrade in 2017.
Thanks to SegWit and the Taproot update, ordinal users can now add 3MB of data to each block, up from the original constraint of 1MB.
The Emergence of the Bitcoin Ordinal Inscription Craze
The Bitcoin ordinal inscription phenomenon began gaining traction in February when users started inscribing their NFTs on Bitcoin’s network. This trend has since experienced rapid growth, as evidenced by the recent surge in inscription transactions.
The resurgence in Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions marks an exciting development in cryptocurrency. As the market continues to evolve, it remains to be seen how the popularity of inscriptions will impact the broader cryptocurrency landscape.
However, with ongoing technological innovations and increasing user adoption, the future of Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions appears promising.
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