Recently, Bitcoin NFTs have been a hot topic in the Web3 world.
At the end of January, the NFT protocol “Ordinals” was officially launched on the Bitcoin mainnet. The protocol allows users to create Bitcoin versions of NFTs. These NFTs are described as “digital artifacts” on the Bitcoin network and support JPEG images. content in image, PDF, video or audio format. Just like the early release of NFT projects on the Ethereum chain, Ordinals Protocol can help many project parties mint NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain.
According to data from Dune Analytics, as of February 10, the cumulative NFT minting volume of the Ordinals protocol has reached 47,772, and the development speed is very rapid.
So, what are the current Bitcoin NFT projects worth paying attention to? This article will take you to understand it together.
1. Ordinal Punks
Launched on the Bitcoin blockchain in late January 2023, Ordinals Punks is probably one of the most talked about on-chain NFT projects currently on the Bitcoin chain, consisting of 100 pixel avatars that have been signed by the Ordinals protocol under the “Inscription ” way is minted on the Bitcoin blockchain and can be traded. However, unlike some Punks clones seen in the past, Ordinals Punks is not a direct copy of the original CryptoPunks series.
The cryptocurrency community believes that Ordinal Punks is based on a derivative ethereum set called Mutant Punks — in other words, it counts as derivatives of derivatives, but sources connected to the project revealed that Ordinal Punks uses open-source The algorithm is actually similar to “CCo Punk Wizard”, and new Punks are also generated based on this algorithm.
This Wednesday (February 8), an Ordinal Punk was sold at a price of 9.5 BTC, reaching a price of 215,000 US dollars, which is equivalent to twice the price of the CryptoPunk floor (the current floor price of CryptoPunks is 64 ETH, or about 106,000 Dollar). On the same day, dingaling, an anonymous NFT investor, claimed that he had purchased 7 Ordinals Punks at a price of 15.2 BTC, with a price of about 349,000 US dollars.
Of course, there is still a big gap between Original Punk and the top-tier CryptoPunk in the industry. After all, CryptoPunk #5822 once set a sky-high price of 8,000 ETH (about 23.7 million US dollars).
2. Bitcoin Punks
On February 9th, the NFT project Bitcoin Punks based on the Bitcoin mainnet Ordinals protocol was minted, with a total of 10,000. According to the official introduction, Bitcoin Punks is the first project to successfully upload the original Ethereum CryptoPunks to the Bitcoin blockchain using Ordinals, and all assets have been minted by collectors for free. According to its development team, they are checking the hash value of each image uploaded to Ordinals and comparing it to the original 10,000 Crypto Punk images. The link to Bitcoin Punks must be the first occurrence of the inscription, which must also Contains the corresponding hash on the Ordinals protocol.
It is reported that the casting cost of Bitcoin Punks is about 25 US dollars, but there is no OTC transaction outside the market at present. It is reported that after the completion of the casting transaction, the price of the NFT secondary market will reach more than 1 bitcoin, which is as high as 100 times the cost price.
However, it is not clear how much trading demand the Bitcoin Punks series has, nor whether it will expand minting in the future. The moderator on the project’s official Discord server also warned holders to “trade cautiously” until the code audit is completed.
3. OnChainMonkey
The NFT project OnChainMonkey also joined the Ordinals protocol and started the casting of “inscriptions” on the Bitcoin blockchain. At present, its 10,000 NFT collections have all been uploaded to the chain, and the previous 10,000 CryptoPunks “copies” Bitcoin Punks have also been in the Bitcoin area. The minting was completed on the block chain, and the NFT minting volume of the Ordinals agreement in a single day on February 9 exceeded 20,000.
OnChainMonkey is an NFT series launched by the NFT startup Metagood, which aims to give community members the opportunity to promote and fund social welfare projects through its DAO. In December last year, the company completed a $5 million Pre seed round of financing, Animoca Brands, Morgan Creek Capital founder and CEO Mark Yusko and Virgin Group investment manager Freddie Andrews participated in the investment.
Summarize
It should be noted that since the Ordinals protocol has just been launched, its functionality is not the same as “traditional” NFTs on other platforms (such as Ethereum and Solana), so there is too much infrastructure at this stage to support trading Bitcoin blocks NFT assets on the chain. In other words, there is currently no Bitcoin NFT marketplace for Ordinals. (Note, in fact, there have been some attempts to explore the BTC NFT market this week, and we will introduce them after observing for a while.)
In fact, such trades are currently traded over-the-counter (OTC) directly between users or through escrow services, with asks and bids tracked via an online spreadsheet. It’s all being facilitated via Twitter and Discord as collectors vie for these Punks clones, as some expect these early bitcoin “inscriptions” to prove more valuable over time.
However, a lack of infrastructure means the current trading model is vulnerable to scams. Some encrypted Twitter users have sounded the alarm, such as anonymous NFT collector TheNorwegian, who suggested that the NFT series on the Bitcoin chain may cause some scams. In the case of CryptoPunks, for example, its clone NFT series is very common, and you can find them everywhere-such as Solana, Polygon, Cardano, Algorand, and even Stacks (a “1.5-layer network” built on top of Bitcoin) .
Frankly speaking, the emergence of Bitcoin NFT has indeed brought some competitive pressure to Ethereum, especially Bitcoin’s launch of Segregated Witness (SegWit) in 2017 and Taproot in 2021. These infrastructure upgrades can fully support NFT use cases. The future NFT market may no longer be dominated by Ethereum.