What Are Bitcoin Ordinals?

Bitcoin Ordinals are a new type of NFT stored on the Bitcoin blockchain. These NFTs are created by assigning a unique number to each satoshi, the smallest unit of Bitcoin.

The satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin, named after Bitcoin's anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, and 1 bitcoin is made up of 100 million satoshis.

Satoshi inscriptions, named after Satoshi Nakamoto, became possible through the Taproot upgrade, which launched on the Bitcoin network on November 14, 2021. With Ordinals, users can create and trade NFT assets on the Bitcoin network through the BRC-20 protocol.

Features of Ordinals

The name "Ordinals" comes from the fact that bitcoins and satoshis are numbered in sequence according to ordinal set theory. The word "ordinals" refers to order numbers (first, second, third, and so on). As a result, the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol identifies on-chain NFTs by their respective ordinal numbers.

The Ordinals protocol was first proposed in 2022 by Casey Rodarmor, the founder of Trust Machines. The Ordinals protocol launched in January 2023 and has since been used to create a wide variety of non-fungible tokens, including art, music, and videos.

The Ordinals protocol identifies satoshis, the smallest unit of Bitcoin, and transmits "data attachments" such as text, videos, and images in JSON format through satoshi inscriptions.

What Is a Satoshi Inscription?

The process of attaching data to a satoshi is called an "inscription," which is similar to the concept of "minting" in general NFT terminology. What makes Bitcoin NFT Ordinals innovative is that they don't require a sidechain, and there's no need to change the code of the Bitcoin Core software.

Bitcoin network users can create a variety of unique NFT tokens by following the BRC-20 standard. After the halving, Ordinals are expected to serve as an incentive for miners.