After the Spring Festival, the biggest source of hot spots in the Web3 industry is not the strong rise of the new L2 star Arbitrum, nor the open and secret struggle between the two new ace public chains Aptos and Sui. Instead, BTC from the living fossil of Web3. Since the launch of the Ordinals protocol on December 14 last year, as of March 6, more than 300,000 NFTs have been minted, and the first set of 10K minted using Ordinals for free, Bitcoin Punks, was minted in less than a day. It was sold out. In the past, it was almost unimaginable. BTC has always been almost synonymous with slowness and cost.
Apart from caring about the price trend of Bitcoin, people will not pay more attention to it. So much so that Bitcoin is joked as: "The greatest value of a classic car made of pure gold is to be exhibited in a museum."
But now, BTC has undoubtedly ushered in a second spring. According to Dune, Bitcoin NFT ushered in a peak in February this year:
Link: https://dune.com/dgtl_assets/bitcoin-ordinals-analysis
Perhaps until now, many people are still confused about the concepts of "Bitcoin Ecological Prosperity" and "Bitcoin NFT". Next, we will explain to you one by one:
What are BTC NFTs
If you use one sentence to describe: BTC NFT is an NFT product released based on the BTC ecosystem. It sounds like it is no different from ETH NFT Polygon NFT.
But in fact, the issuance of NFT on the BTC chain is defined based on the smallest unit of measurement of the BTC network, Sats (Satoshi). First of all, we need to understand what Sats is: the name of the 8th digit of Bitcoin after the decimal point, and the ratio of BTC is 100 million: 1. It is named after Satoshi (Satoshi Nakamoto) in commemoration of the great pioneering work. So how to use Sats to issue NFT on the BTC network? Here I have to mention an agreement: Ordinals.
Since the birth of the Ordinals protocol, users can engrave information on the Bitcoin chain, including text/pictures/audio/video, thus creating an NFT on the Bitcoin chain.
Ordinals is an NFT protocol based on the BTC network, designed to assign a unique identity to each satoshis (sat). Using Ord software, the protocol adds data to these sats and allows software users to track them based on a system of ordinal numbers. In other words, the Ordinal protocol expresses the smallest unit of bitcoin, sats, in the form of NFT, and gives sats a well-reasoned transaction value and collection value. When the smallest unit becomes a new hype target, to some extent, it can be regarded as an expansion of Bitcoin.
Since the birth of the Ordinals protocol, users can engrave information on the Bitcoin chain, including text/pictures/audio/video, thus creating an NFT on the Bitcoin chain.
It's like engraving your name and picture on a dime currency, so that this dime becomes a Non-Fungible Token. For example, if the serial number is dd 082 adcb 3 aab 2882185 e 3 a 2 f 927 bbff 53 cf 6 ffe 8 ab 47 2d 57740 ea 9 f 95 c 0 acdai 0, it has the following characteristics: the time when this Sats was dug out, Percentile, name, mined block and scarcity, etc. At the same time, this Satoshi is also engraved with a visual jepg. According to these characteristics, you can easily find it. This Sats is also called Inscription 338381, that is, it is the engraved inscription No. 338381.
How is it different compared to smart contracts?
Through the above, we understand the origin of BTC NFT, so how is it different from the conventional ETH NFT currently on the market? First of all, we need to clarify the definition of smart contract NFT.
Smart contract NFT definition:
Smart Contract NFT: How to achieve uniqueness & indivisibility: the Token ID composed of integers is mapped to the URL containing NFT metadata (name, description, picture address), and then the contract is used as the collection boundary, so through the contract address→TokenID→ Metadata can retrieve a specific NFT layer by layer.
Collection: Use the 721 or 1155 protocol contract to issue and transfer NFT Collection.
Metadata: Usually stored in IFPS or a centralized server. There are metadata attributes in the Collection smart contract, and the metadata is set to point to a URL storage address
Transaction: Authorize the NFT transfer authority to the transaction contract through the Marketplace transaction contract
In other words, an NFT should have at least four elements: uniqueness, indivisibility, transferability, and descriptiveness. Let's take a look at how BTC NFT is implemented?
BTC NFT：
Uniqueness: Ordinals ordinal number theory: the ordinal number is numbered from 0 in the order in which Satoshi was mined, the first Satoshi in the first block has a serial number of 0, the second Satoshi has a serial number of 1, and the last Satoshi The serial number is 4999999999, so each Satoshi has an ID attribute.
Indivisibility: As we can see above, Sats are the smallest unit of BTC and cannot be split.
Transferability: Transfer Satoshi from transaction inputs to output sats in FIFO order, enabling directional transfers. But in the current transaction process, since there is no smart contract, a centralized platform is needed to act as an arbitrator.
Describability: Stored on the BTC chain, so there is a size limit. Because the inscription is on the chain, it cannot refer to the off-chain content, so it cannot be modified, unlike Ethereum NFT, which is indexed through off-chain IPFS or AWS, but because there are no smart contracts and other issues, the inscription cannot support on-chain royalties .
How to get BTC NFT?
hardware requirements
Computers with solid-state hard drives of more than 1 t, generally everyone will use their personal computers to install the Bitcoin full node. Apart from the space used by themselves, at least 600 g of space is required to store Bitcoin blocks.
In a normal network environment, synchronization takes a long time, about 10 hours. Domestic users may need to bypass the firewall, or it may take longer.
process
Need to download BitCoin Core and synchronize the full node, 500 Gb+ space;
Need to download Ordinal and create an Ordinal wallet;
Use the instructions of the ord protocol for Satoshi's characterization;
Set the inscription. The inscription of Bitcoin can be a picture or a txt file. Take the txt file as an example to mint a sats domain name.
Open the built-in software "Text Editing" and enter the content officially required by sats
Format - make plain text, then save it as a txt file, copy the path where the file is saved.
In the ordinals command window, enter ./ord wallet inscribe 'file path' - - fee -rate <current rate>. Current top priority rates can be viewed here. It should be noted here that the fee rate must be set manually, because the default rate is 1. If you do not set it, you will be stuck and unable to confirm the transaction.
Wait for the block confirmation, run ./ord wallet inscriptions to view the inscription information. Or go to the official website of ordinals to see the latest information.
Transfer BTC to wallet.
Setup Foundry Bot: Facilitates casting and receiving orders.
Mining NFT: It is very simple to upload pictures/audio/videos, and let the robot help us mint them into NFTs. The larger the file size, the more gas it will cost to mint, and the more expensive it will be.
Mint Sats domain name: Buy a domain name on Bitcoin once, it will be free forever, and no annual renewal is required.
The above process is the BTC NFT casting method built by the full node. The premise of this is that the user needs to synchronize the full BTC node on his computer. Although it is very troublesome, it can reduce the loss of handling fees during the casting process and is also conducive to deep participation. BTC NFT ecology.
If users think that building a full node is too troublesome, in fact, there are already many third-party nodes in the industry to replace casting. For example: ordinalsbot, Gamma, unisat_wallet, etc. The advantage of these third parties is that users can simplify the casting process, but it also means that more fees and product service fees need to be paid. Descriptions of these products are set forth below.
BTC NFT ecological interpretation:
(1) Yuga Labs: Yuga Labs, the creator of the strongest IP in the NFT field, officially announced a plan: to launch the NFT series TwelveFold on the Bitcoin blockchain based on the Ordinal protocol. TwelveFold is based on a 12 x 12 sized grid, a visual allegory for Bitcoin blockchain data mapping. Also, unlike PFP columns like BAYC, the pieces that make up the TwelveFold collection were produced in-house by Yuga Labs' art team using 3D modeling, algorithmic construction, and high-end rendering tools to pay homage to the serial number inscriptions that are currently done by hand.
Link: https://yuga.com/
(2) DeGodsNFT: DeGods, a Solana ecological NFT project, has destroyed 535 of its NFTs on the Solana chain and minted them as "inscriptions" in a separate block on the Bitcoin chain using the Ordinals protocol
Link: https://degods.com/
(3) Crypto Punks: Crypto Punks is the first project to issue NFT on the Bitcoin network. Currently, BAYC is also considering issuing NFT in Bitcoin.
Link: https://bitcoinpunks.com/
(4) Gamma.io: The Gamma platform aims to bring collectors, creators, and investors together in the Bitcoin ecosystem. The platform consists of three core products: NFT market, Launchpad and social interaction. Users can use the tools provided by the Gamma robot to mint NFT, which solves the pain point of creating NFT technology on the Bitcoin network with high barriers, complexity and time-consuming.
Link: https://gamma.io/
(5) Ordinals Bot: Ordinals Bot is also a tool for minting Bitcoin NFT on the Ordinals protocol. This tool saves users from the trouble of running a Bitcoin node when minting Bitcoin NFT. Players can upload the NFT file you need to mint, fill in the NFT address you need to receive (the address is recommended to start with bc 1), click"Submit & Pay Invoice"After that, the payment address and payment QR code will pop up, and you can pay. This friendlier is that the payment supports the Lightning Network and the Bitcoin main network. Because the Bitcoin network is slow, it may take 10 to 60 minutes after payment to be officially confirmed by the network.
Link: https://ordinalsbot.com/
(6) Stacks: Stacks is an open source project initiated by Bitcoin builders, and it is a Bitcoin Layer 2 that can use smart contracts. Strictly speaking, anything that can be built on Ethereum and Solana can be built on Stacks L2 s. At present, $250 million has been locked in the contract on Stacks L2, and 2,200 bitcoins have been issued to users as rewards. The next version of Stacks, coming out this year, will add a decentralized BTC anchor, making it easy to transfer BTC into or out of Stacks L2.
Link: https://www.stacks.co/
(7) getAlby: support bitcoin lightning network payment
Link: https://getalby.com/
(8) Xverse: Support BTC NFT storage
Link: https://www.xverse.app/
Summarize
Summarize
Although the BTC NFT ecology is very prosperous, the current financing situation of the Bitcoin sector is not optimistic. As of February 22, according to The Block’s data, the current Bitcoin ecology in the past year has only reached 500 million US dollars. Compared with the total financing of the entire industry of nearly 30 billion US dollars, it is really not in line with Bitcoin’s status as the overlord of the blockchain.
In addition to financing problems, the current BTC NFT also has many criticisms:
First of all, the threshold is extremely high:
high memory requirements;
The operation process is cumbersome;
Gas is expensive and consumes a lot of funds, which is difficult for small players to afford.
Second, boycotted by BTC fundamentalists:
As mentioned above, giving Sats value and meaning is to some extent an act of expanding the amount of BTC, which will make many BTC fundamentalists believe that it affects the scarcity of BTC.
In addition, the function of giving Bitcoin to NFT is also considered by BTC fundamentalists to violate the spiritual core advocated by the Bitcoin white paper.
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