Original - Odaily
Author - Nan Zhi
November 16,Ordinals project Taproot Wizards announces it has successfully raised $7.5 million, led by Standard Crypto, with participation from Geometry, Collider Ventures, StarkWare, UTXO Management, Bitcoin Frontier Fund, Masterkey and Newman Capital, at an undisclosed valuation. The funding will reportedly be used to rebuild Bitcoin’s “Wizard Village,” symbolizing its desire to compete with major blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana.
The first Taproot Wizards were inscribed on the Bitcoin network on February 2, with founder Udi Wertheimer stating: “(Wizard) Mint createdThe largest block (LARGEST BLOCK) and largest transaction (LARGEST TRANSACTION) in Bitcoin history”。
In August of this year, regarding reports that “Bitcoin Ordinals NFT trading volume has dropped by 98% since May”, Eric Wall, one of the founders of Taproot Wizards, said: “I admit that Ordinals is a huge failure and am willing to support all purchases of the Taproot Wizards project. People who have received a double refund and can keep the jpeg (no need to return the NFT) have opened private messages. Of course, this is more of an irony, but it also reveals the deserted situation of the Ordinals market in August.
Odaily will detail the past and present life of Taproot Wizards and its subsequent development plans.
Taproot Wizards
from ten years ago
On February 19, 2013, a moderator of the r/Bitcoin subreddit posted a post asking the public for an image to be used as a promotional banner for the subreddits.
One hour and one minute later, a user named mavensbot posted a picture of the Wizard and quickly became the focus of the community with its abstract style.
And the price of Bitcoin that day,Only $29.60; Two months later (April 10), it hit a record high of $266 in the first half of 2013, and hit a year-high of $1,156 on November 30 of that year.
Also in November 2013, an image similar to the Wizard created by mavensbot appeared in the seventh episode of the seventeenth season of the American adult animated TV series South Park.
Big and Little Wizards
On February 2, Udi Wertheimer announced a series of NFTs engraved with Taproot Wizards, with a block size of 3.96 MB, approaching the upper limit of the maximum block of 4 MB.
This series belongs toUdi WertheimerandErica Wall(This is the guy who promised a refund in the previous article) For the second creation of the original image, the co-developers also include the Bitcoin mining company Luxor, which ignited the popularity of Ordinals to a certain extent. The series is calledThe Great Wizard, there is no sales plan released yet, and it has been whitelisted for the Little Wizard series.
On February 18th, the 10th anniversary of The Witcher’s promotional image,mavensbotReleased Bitcoin Wizard’s NFT series, with a total of 1,337 pieces, known asLittle Wizard, and a related token $WZRD was later issued.
Wizard Village Project
When Tech Crunch reported on Taproot Wizards’ financing, Taproot Wizards stated that the financing funds will be used to rebuild Bitcoin’s wizard village, but did not elaborate on it.Report by BITCOIN MAGAZINEThere is the following explanation:
Udi Wertheimer, co-founder of Taproot Wizards, said: “We are seeking a larger round of seed funding of $7.5 million because we feel that time is of the essence. We have been bullish on Bitcoin for ten years, but we realistically believe thatNow is the best time to invest in Bitcoin。”
Taproot Wizards aims to assemble a strong development team to further develop tools and applications that fully exploit the potential of open source protocols.The projects mission is to maximize the potential of Taproot, an upgrade designed to enhance Bitcoin’s privacy, security, and efficiency.
Wertheimer further stated: “We are focused on achieving the best breakthroughs in broader crypto research to advance Bitcoin and Ordinals, such as the open source we shared a few months agorollup job, and will use the funds to build a top Bitcoin development team.
The focus of Taproot Wizards is to foster an ecosystem where developers can collaborate and create solutions that harness the power of Bitcoin. The project aims to pioneer new applications, improve scalability, and solidify Bitcoin’s security infrastructure.
Standard Crypto co-founder Alok Vasudev, who led the investment, said: Not only do we find Bitcoin NFTs very attractive as an asset; we also believe that the Ordinals movement has the opportunity to reignite innovation in Bitcoin on a broader scale - which we believe is necessary for Bitcoin to realize its full potential, and while curating a significant NFT collection and its community is valuable in its own right, we believe Taproot Wizards has a greater opportunity to leverage its brand as a distribution channel for new Bitcoin infrastructure .”
As the Bitcoin industry continues to evolve, Taproot Wizards strives to encourage builders to expand new possibilities within the Bitcoin space, using Taproot upgrades as a cornerstone for innovation and growth.
