Bitcoin NFT protocol Ordinals inscriptions total exceeds 10 million, new protocol GBRC721 attracts attention

The total number of inscriptions minted under the Bitcoin NFT protocol Ordinals has exceeded 10 million, with cumulative fee income reaching 1578.4611 BTC, approximately 44.14 million USD. Since software engineer Casey Rodarmor launched the Ordinals protocol on the Bitcoin mainnet on January 30 of this year, its growth has been astonishing. By early April, the number of inscriptions minted surpassed 1 million, achieving a 10-fold increase in less than two months, demonstrating the rapid expansion of this ecosystem.

The surge in the number of inscriptions has directly led to the skyrocketing of Bitcoin network fees, maintaining them at a high level. At the same time, a large number of creators have flocked to the Ordinals ecosystem, further intensifying the demand for Bitcoin block space. To address or optimize the current pain points, developers are continuously launching new protocols or standards, among which the GBRC721 protocol is the most noteworthy.

The full name of the GBRC721 protocol is generative-brc-721, created by Jerry, the founder of the DogePunks project. This protocol claims to save on-chain resources, achieving a 50%-90% optimization of block space, allowing for more creators and promoting innovation. It also addresses the issue of projects having to choose IPFS for off-chain storage, enabling Bitcoin on-chain NFTs to be fully stored on-chain without relying on third-party retrieval support.

With more platforms integrating, the front-end interface of the GBRC721 protocol can display the actual images generated by minting inscriptions, rather than text data. This process can be seamlessly completed by scanning the user's text inscription "gen-brc-721". The system will regenerate the images using on-chain data and store them within its infrastructure.

The deployment and inscription process of the GBRC721 protocol is similar to that of BRC20 tokens, including three main steps: creating a BRC721 collection, minting non-fungible serial numbers, and transferring non-fungible Ordinals to standard numbered inscriptions. To optimize community experience and ensure fair distribution, developers are considering introducing an on-chain whitelist mechanism.

Currently, the GBRC721 ecosystem has more than 10,000 transactions, spending a total of 1.68 BTC. The most representative project is OrdiBots. As an example project of the GBRC721 standard, OrdiBots is made up of 26 different feature combinations, with a total of 1,000 pieces. Through the GBRC721 standard, the overall collection size has reduced from 663kb to 294kb, resulting in a total block space reduction of about 55%.

OrdiBots completed its inscriptions in late May, attracting a lot of attention and funding due to its innovation and first-mover advantage. The total transaction volume has reached 26.8 BTC, with 350 holding addresses. From an initial inscription cost of around 3 USD, its floor price has risen to a maximum of 0.12 BTC, equivalent to about 3200 USD, representing an increase of up to 1000 times. OrdiBots currently has a market value of approximately 2.1 million USD, and although it still lags behind the leading project Bitcoin Frogs, which has a market value of 25.6 million USD, its development potential is worth following.

The success of OrdiBots relies on the strong consensus of its community. The project has gained widespread attention by auctioning golden outfits daily and distributing the proceeds to the community. Community members have also spontaneously developed tools for rarity queries and holding rankings, and actively interact with the platform and other projects within the ecosystem to empower holders.

Influenced by OrdiBots, the GBRC721 ecosystem welcomes a new project, OrdiBlocks. Launched by the DogePunks management team, there is a total of 666 pieces. The project has sparked extreme enthusiasm in the community since its launch, with each collectible being inscribed 4-5 times or more. The cost price rose from 3 dollars to as high as 400 dollars, currently falling back to around 90 dollars. The total transaction amount is 60,000 dollars, with 223 unique holding addresses.

Although the GBRC721 protocol has gained attention due to the success of OrdiBots, its ecological infrastructure still needs improvement. For example, some trading platforms have not yet supported the actual image display of inscriptions under the GBRC721 standard. Ecological projects also need to continuously build and expand consensus while the community's enthusiasm is high, in order to avoid being short-lived.

Looking at the development of the Ordinals protocol, in just four months, the Bitcoin ecosystem has transitioned from being little noticed to receiving significant attention, with developers continuously introducing new protocols or standards to address existing challenges. Although some remain skeptical about applications running on Bitcoin, in the current Web3 space, which is still dominated by concepts and stories, the Ordinals protocol has opened up a new track for the market, potentially bringing new opportunities and breakthroughs.