Why not bullish on the new Bitcoin NFT protocol, Bitcoin Stamps?

Although the newly added NFT quantity of Bitcoin Stamps, a new NFT protocol for Bitcoin, has exceeded that of the Ordinals protocol recently, many Bitcoin NFT players have already "taken precautions". However, I am not optimistic about the future of Bitcoin Stamps.

Why not optimistic about Bitcoin Stamps?

贵

The author uploaded a 254-byte Punk image to UniSat and stampchain.io respectively. The cost of engraving the same image differed by more than 10 times.

UniSat（Ordinals）

stampchain.io（Bitcoin Stamps）

In 2017, the SegWit upgrade's "Witness Discount" allowed Bitcoin NFTs engraved through the Ordinals protocol to receive a 75% discount compared to the Bitcoin Stamps protocol. However, even if we multiply UniSat's engraving cost by 4, it is only about $24, while the transaction fee charged by the Bitcoin Stamps protocol is as high as about $85. What is the extra part? The author is also in the dark...

Of course, we can also choose not to use the "official proxy" service provided on stampchain.io and instead choose to use Counter Wallet for self-burning. However, the self-burning process is quite cumbersome, requiring the installation and configuration of Counter Wallet, and converting images to Base64 strings... In addition, stampchain.io's high fees for "official proxy" services have made the Bitcoin NFT community feel resentful. After all, in the Bitcoin NFT circle without a royalty mechanism, many players and even project parties are "generating electricity with love", and the spirit of free and fair Bitcoin is the cornerstone of establishing good trust between Bitcoin NFT players and project parties.

自由度不足

Insufficient Degrees of Freedom.

The size of the Bitcoin NFT burned through the Ordinals protocol is only limited by the 4 MB size of the witness data field, and the data types that can be burned include MIME types, from text, images, animations to music, videos, and HTML files. The 466th Bitcoin NFT burned is the classic game "Doom" by id Software. (Want to try playing "Doom" with Bitcoin NFT? Click here)

Inscription #466「Doom」, the author has completed the game.

Bitcoin Stamps excludes MIME types and limits image data to jpg, png, gif, and webp formats, with a size limit of 7 KB. Due to cost issues, the official recommendation for uploaded files is png and gif files with a size of 24*24 pixels and 8-bit color depth.

The official said that this restriction is very suitable for pixel art. Well, compared to Ordinals, there is indeed a feeling of painting on a small stamp... However, since there is a larger "canvas" like Ordinals, why use Bitcoin Stamps?

"Permanently", did Ordinals really lose?

Bitcoin Stamps protocol encodes the binary content of an image as a base64 string and inserts this string into the "Description" field, and inserts the data chunks into the transaction output, making the image data the "basic block data" and thus cannot be filtered by full nodes.

Ordinals protocol inserts data into the "witness data" section, which full nodes can choose to discard. In the article "Bitcoin NFT Exploration: Ordinals Protocol, FOMO, and Debate", the author mentioned that Bitcoin core developer Luke Dashjr quickly developed a patch for miners to filter and broadcast transactions containing Bitcoin NFTs created with the Ordinals protocol.

This seems to be a technical issue on the surface, but in reality it is a market (miner) decision. Currently, the Ordinals protocol is thriving, with major NFT markets like Magic Eden entering the scene, as well as top IRL brands like Bugatti deciding to issue NFT series through the Ordinals protocol. Will we really see full nodes on the Bitcoin network reach a consensus to resist the Ordinals protocol?

According to @smyyguy's data, only 0.3% of miners' income in March came from the Ordinals protocol. The Ordinals protocol is still very young, and who knows if it will really develop to affect the operation of the Bitcoin network, and who knows whether the impact will be good or bad...

Conclusion

The more expensive and less freedom, as well as the "permanent advantage" that only exists in the narrative level, are the reasons why the author is not optimistic about the Bitcoin Stamps protocol. Although the number of new recordings of Bitcoin Stamps has exceeded Ordinals in recent days, after the "self-defense craze" passes, Ordinals protocol is likely to regain the upper hand. After all, the supporting infrastructure of the Ordinals protocol has developed rapidly, and many blue-chip projects have already occupied a good position in the Ordinals ecosystem. The protocol itself has even been forked to Litecoin and Dogecoin, which cannot be compared with Bitcoin Stamps and are difficult to catch up with due to its own technical limitations.

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