{"id":5190,"date":"2023-02-10T19:17:25","date_gmt":"2023-02-10T19:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci02b79540100027fa"},"modified":"2025-01-28T14:27:35","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:27:35","slug":"bitcoin-nfts-protocol-ordinals-50000-inscriptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/technical\/bitcoin-nfts-protocol-ordinals-50000-inscriptions","title":{"rendered":"Bitcoin NFTs Protocol Ordinals Nears 50,000 Inscriptions"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div><p>Bitcoin is nearing 50,000 inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain. From <a href=\"https:\/\/bitcoinpunks.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bitcoin Punks<\/a> to audio <a href=\"https:\/\/ordinals.com\/inscription\/d8c2c72d1eac6c849869ce1cbb3fd186c78edabc9300adb9a88940f3e305eddbi0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recordings of farts<\/a>, the ability to inscribe data directly onto the Bitcoin blockchain has taken the community by storm.<\/p>\n<p>Inscriptions, through the <a href=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/technical\/ordinals-launch-nft-on-bitcoin\">Ordinal<\/a> protocol, allow users to embed data, usually images, directly onto the Bitcoin blockchain, effectively enabling NFTs on Bitcoin.<\/p>\n<p>The mempool, the collection of Bitcoin blocks waiting to be mined and added to the blockchain, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/murchandamus\/status\/1624035754530816000?s=46&amp;t=lR8eo1ZUqey6kKaszzIRLA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">has now filled<\/a> at the time of writing as a result of the increase in block space usage that inscriptions has brought. <\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/86_image1.png\" title=\"\"><\/figure>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The mempool has a depth of 68\u202fblocks, and is just about to reach the 300\u202fMB memory limit on nodes with default configuration. 15\u202fblocks of data are now above the 1\u20132\u202f\u1e69\/vB feerate band. The minimum feerate to get into the next block is 17\u202f\u1e69\/vB.<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/mempoolreport?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">#mempoolreport<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/qFtHlXSUvk\">pic.twitter.com\/qFtHlXSUvk<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Murch (@murchandamus) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/murchandamus\/status\/1624035754530816000?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">February 10, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/1440000bytes\/status\/1621255873313255424?s=20&amp;t=2BKn3FvT9TE1FCdhlM86yg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Debate<\/a> has raged on in regards to the impacts of the introduction of Ordinals on Bitcoin. Bitcoin Magazine\u2019s Mark Goodwin <a href=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/technical\/concerning-ordinals\">released a succinct exploration<\/a> of the potential impacts that this project could have.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBitcoin is a database with a specified consensus, and there is nothing within Ordinal Theory nor Inscriptions that violate those rules,\u201d Goodwin writes. \u201cThe point being that the mere fact something is a possible use case for bitcoin does not necessarily mean it is a net good for the users of the system. And yet Bitcoin is a system of rules, not biases, and the arbiter of validity must remain the code \u2026 The worst action to be taken would be one that hastily distorts the hard-fought conditions currently set. Someone could have always simply bought every block in perpetuity.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Zack Voell, Bitcoin Magazine mining contributor, <a href=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/culture\/bitcoin-ordinals-can-change-mining-revenue\">recently explored<\/a> Ordinals\u2019 potential impact for the future of the bitcoin mining industry in specific, saying \u201cOrdinals are Bitcoin data inscriptions that give miners a glimpse at what the future of Bitcoin MEV could be \u2026 Ordinals gives a glimpse of a future where other Bitcoin users introduce creative reasons to demand the same space, which forces these competing users to meet in the fee market for the limited space inside of a block.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>All in all, the project could have major ramifications on mining and the development of Bitcoin. But what\u2019s certain is that inscriptions are not slowing down \u2014 at least not yet, not in the current fee environment. This could change as the fee market reflects the dynamics of this increased block space demand, but for now, it seems we\u2019re on a <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/rodarmor\/status\/1623873508768985090\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">one-way<\/a> track towards millions of inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the introduction of Ordinals, Bitcoiners have now inscripted more than 45,000 NFTs directly onto the Bitcoin blockchain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2730,"featured_media":3821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[584,93,1130,336],"class_list":{"0":"post-5190","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technical","8":"tag-inscriptions","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-nfts","11":"tag-ordinals"},"author_data":{"id":2730,"name":"BtcCasey","nicename":"casey","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/jn_tjlo_400x400.jpg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/flag-freedom-nation-adventure-innovation.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2730"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}