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When it comes to digital collectibles, most enthusiasts think of Ethereum, Solana, or Polygon\u2014deservedly, as proof-of-stake blockchains have cornered the NFT marketplace. But digital collectibles using the Bitcoin blockchain have existed since 2014<\/a>, and several projects have made it their continuing mission to bring NFTs to the first and biggest cryptocurrency.<\/p>\n NFTs<\/a> are digital assets that are provably unique and linked to digital (and sometimes physical) content like digital art, movies, and music that show proof of ownership or membership in an exclusive group.<\/p>\n Even though NFTs have been in the Bitcoin ecosystem for nearly a decade, however, some still don\u2019t see the point.<\/p>\n One of these projects is Ordinals, and some Bitcoin maximalists are calling it an affront<\/a> to Bitcoin principles.<\/p>\n “you can’t stop them” well ofc! bitcoin is designed to be censor resistant. doesn’t stop us mildly commenting on the sheer waste and stupidity of an encoding. at least do something efficient. otherwise it’s another proof of consumption of block-space thingy.<\/p>\n \u2014 Adam Back (@adam3us) January 29, 2023<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor takes the criticism in stride, saying the controversy helps his cause.<\/p>\n \u201cI actually love the haters,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, they do more to drive people to find out about the project than anybody else. I don\u2019t know what they think when they have these massive audiences, and they go, \u2018This is an attack on Bitcoin\u2019\u2014it seems like you don\u2019t want to do that if you don\u2019t want people to use the thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Rodarmor is a former Bitcoin Core contributor who designed Ordinals<\/a> to allow the transferring of individual satoshis on the Bitcoin network. \u201cThe Ordinals protocol is just a system for numbering Satoshis, giving individual sats a serial number, and then tracking them across transactions,\u201d Rodarmor told Decrypt<\/i> in an interview.<\/p>\n The Ordinals protocol enables users to explore, transfer, and receive individual satoshis, which may include unique inscribed data such as videos and images. The process of adding assets to individual satoshis is called inscription. As Rodarmor explains, inscriptions make it possible to put content in a Bitcoin transaction and assign it to a satoshi. Once completed, Rodarmor says, the inscriptions are stored in a Bitcoin transaction\u2019s signature.<\/p>\n The process stays entirely on the Bitcoin<\/a> network and does not require a sidechain or additional token, according to Rodarmor. \u201cMy design goal, from the beginning, was to create something that would strike people as being Bitcoin native,\u201d he said. \u201cThat means it can\u2019t have a token, and it can\u2019t be a sidechain.\u201d<\/p>\n Satoshis\u2014named after Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of the Bitcoin blockchain\u2014is the smallest unit of a Bitcoin. When someone buys a cup of coffee using BTC, they are most likely using satoshis instead of a whole Bitcoin, which currently trades around $22,700 per coin, according to Coingecko<\/a>.<\/p>\n Marginalized peoples in developing countries will have to pay more to run their Bitcoin nodes and send transactions because privileged wealthy whites want to put JPEG drawings on the blockchain as status symbols. Just because you can doesn\u2019t mean you should.<\/p>\n\n
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