While some view the Ordinals protocol as a bothersome aspect of Bitcoin, others are doubling down on its potential for nonfungible tokens (NFTs) within the Bitcoin ecosystem.
On December 18th, OKX’s NFT marketplace surpassed its competitors in terms of daily trading volume, signaling a growing interest in Bitcoin-based NFTs. To further support Bitcoin NFTs, the company announced on January 29th that it would be adding Atomicals and Runes to its marketplace. Additionally, it will also include Dogecoin’s Doginals, expanding its support for Ordinals in other chains.
In addition to its marketplace, OKX also revealed that it will support the token standards from Atomicals, Stamps, Runes, and Doginals on its Web3 Wallet.
While OKX openly supports Ordinals and other Bitcoin protocols, some members of the Bitcoin ecosystem have expressed their disdain for Bitcoin Ordinals, even going so far as to label them as digital spam. However, Jason Lau, the Chief Innovation Officer at crypto exchange OKX, disagrees with this sentiment.
Lau stated in an interview with Cointelegraph that in open and permissionless networks like Bitcoin, there is no such thing as spam. He believes that all transactions are valid as long as the fees are paid and they adhere to consensus rules. Lau further argues that Ordinals and inscriptions can open up new possibilities for users and provide developers with a new design space. He believes that inscriptions have the potential to become powerful digital collectibles as they store data and art on-chain, allowing for the creation of new types of NFTs.
On December 19th, several blockchains, including Arbitrum, Avalanche, Cronos, zkSync, and The Open Network, experienced full or partial outages due to a surge in transaction activity driven by people creating inscriptions on other networks, similar to Bitcoin Ordinals.
When Lau was asked about the potential for inscriptions to congest blockchains, he referred to them as “growing pains.” He believes that these issues are unavoidable in the early stages of adoption but will be resolved over time.
“While it is still early for the inscriptions ecosystem, we see a unique opportunity for growth as we expand our support beyond just BRC-20 to include emerging standards like Atomicals, Stamps, Runes, and Doginals,” Lau explained.
In conclusion, the use of Ordinals has led some to view Bitcoin as a less desirable version of Ethereum. However, proponents of Ordinals are optimistic about its potential and believe that any challenges encountered along the way will be overcome.