Magic Eden Starts Supporting Bitcoin NFT “Ordinals” - OhNo WTF Crypto

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Magic Eden Starts Supporting Bitcoin NFT “Ordinals”

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Magic Eden Supports Bitcoin NFTs

Cross-chain NFT electronic marketplace Magic Eden opened a marketplace for “Ordinals,” which are NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) of Bitcoin and Blockchain, on the 22nd. Over 70 collections created with the Ordinals Protocol are listed on Magic Eden.

Currently, Magic Eden’s Ordinal marketplace specializes in secondary distribution, but in the future it has indicated a policy to provide Ordinals creation (inscription) functionality on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The Ordinals Protocol, which was released on January 21, assigns a serial number to satoshi (1/100 million of 1 BTC), which is the smallest unit of Bitcoin, and stores data such as videos and images in one satoshi on the Bitcoin blockchain. Mechanism for saving directly to .

In Ordinals, adding content such as text and images to individual satoshis is called Inscription, and strictly speaking, it is not NFT but a “digital artifact”.

The number of Ordinals NFTs issued has skyrocketed in the past two months, with over 500,000 at the time of writing. NFT collections that are sold at high prices have also appeared, and “Ordinal Punks” was traded at 9.5 BTC (about 27 million yen) in February.

Magic Eden will launch in September 2021 as an NFT electronic marketplace on the Solana blockchain. Later added support for Polygon (MATIC) blockchain. It also provides aggregation of NFTs on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain.

According to Magic Eden’s website, there are more than 22 million monthly unique user sessions and more than 100,000 daily wallet connections.

Growing Ordinals

The fledgling Ordinals has so far lacked basic infrastructure such as a stats site and marketplace. Bitcoin can also use a programming language called “script”, but because it differs in nature from the smart contracts used in Ethereum and Solana, there was a limit to the code collection that could be used.

For this reason, early users of Ordinals managed bidding status with Google Spreadsheets, etc., and promoted over-the-counter trading (OTC) on Discord. Many of the marketplaces associated with Ordinals use multisig (multiple signature) escrow, where funds are handed over after the parties to the transaction agree.

This time, the entry of Magic Eden will improve the user experience, and there is a possibility that digital artifacts created with Ordinals will spread to general users.

The video above shows Magic Eden supports 3 bitcoin wallets: Xverse, Unisat and Hiro. Users can complete transactions via Magic Eden while keeping BTC and Oridinals in their non-custodial wallets.

What is non-custodial

Non-custodial refers to the management of the private key of the wallet by the user, not by a central management organization such as an exchange or service provider.

▶Cryptocurrency Glossary

The charm of Ordinals

Magic Eden announced on its official Twitter account that it was “the first fully audited Ordinals marketplace.” Zhuoxun Yun, co-founder and COO of Magic Eden, also told foreign cryptocurrency media Decrypt that the company’s Ordinals marketplace usability is on a par with existing electronic markets.

As long as you have Bitcoin in your wallet, you can go there and buy something. Users will have the same feeling as has been done with Ethereum and others so far.

More recently, more user-friendly marketplaces have emerged that support Ordinals. ORDX, Generative, and even Bitcoin’s Layer 2 scaling network Stacks NFT marketplace Gamma. Infrastructure issues are expected to be resolved in the future.

connection:Bitcoin Layer 2 “Stacks (STX)” soars about 6 times since the beginning of the year

Meanwhile, creators who appreciate the potential of Ordinals are gradually entering the Bitcoin NFT market. Yuga Labs, which handles NFTs such as “Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)”, held an auction for the Ordinals version of the NFT collection “TwelveFold” in early March.

connection:Bitcoin Layer 2 “Stacks (STX)” soars about 6 times since the beginning of the year

While Solana and Ethereum’s Layer 2 networks allow for high-speed transactions, the Bitcoin blockchain’s processing capacity is limited to 7 transactions per second. As such, Ordinals seem to be a better match for store-of-value of higher-priced assets than low-margin, high-selling NFTs like in-game items.

“TwelveFold” is a generative art collection of 300 pieces, which is different from the current project of Yuga Labs, which has focused on animation and illustration. Through the 24-hour auction, the highest bid was 7.1159 BTC (about 21.5 million yen) and the lowest bid was 2.25 BTC (about 6.8 million yen).

Magic Eden’s head of business development, Igor Milihram, argues that Ordinals, leveraging the security of the Bitcoin network, can offer a different set of values ​​than other NFT chains.

“Ordinals artwork will remain forever on all nodes of the BTC network”. Even if some nodes are attacked, as long as the data remains on the nodes connected to the decentralized network, it will be preserved.

According to the data site BITNODES, the number of nodes participating in the Bitcoin network at the time of writing is 17,111, distributed around the world, mainly in Europe, the United States, and East Asia. Also, compared to other blockchains, Bitcoin has a very high hash rate (323.22 EH/s) and is said to be highly resistant to 51% attacks. Since its birth in 2009, it has maintained a stable network for about 14 years.

“It’s immortal in that sense, and that’s what makes Ordinals even more valuable,” concludes Milihram.

connection:Yuga Labs Bitcoin NFT Auction Completed

What is 51% attack?

A 51% attack is when a malicious individual or group seizes a majority of mining power. It refers to an attack that refuses legitimate transactions, engages in illegal transactions, or monopolizes mining. Attack targets are cryptocurrencies that use a consensus algorithm called “Proof of Work (PoW),” such as Bitcoin.

▶Cryptocurrency Glossary



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