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Rushing into Bitcoin infrastructure, trading platforms such as OKX are competing to support BRC-20.

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No one could have imagined that fifteen years later, the emergence of Ordinals would bring new value propositions and narratives to Bitcoin.

Original Title: "Storming the Bitcoin Infrastructure, OKX Continuously Tweets about BRC-20"

Source: 0xTree

Bitcoin, the "digital gold" of the cryptocurrency industry, has undergone several major stress tests in its narrative history, and its value consensus has been repeatedly strengthened.

No one could have imagined that fifteen years later, the emergence of Ordinals would bring new value and imagination to Bitcoin, bringing a new narrative.

Ordinals has gained unprecedented attention in the market and has also received strong support from the global trading platform OKX. Recently, OKX founder Xu Mingxing has been tweeting about BRC-20, from quickly learning about related knowledge to collaborating with the Bitcoin Inscription Wallet UniSat Wallet, and then to the official BRC-20 browser. This has continued to fuel speculation in the market about OKX's rush to seize the Bitcoin infrastructure.

OKX Web3 and many other product lines are also taking action frequently. Following the launch of support for the display and transfer of Ordinal NFTs, OKX Web3 wallet announced that it will soon support the trading of Ordinal NFTs and other exciting features, which shows OKX's emphasis on the Bitcoin ecosystem. Although the trust and learning costs of Ordinals are high, OKX clearly intends to lower the user participation threshold through product innovation, speed up infrastructure construction, and simplify participation to attract more users.

According to informed sources, OKX is establishing a BRC-20 parsing standard and undergoing a SlowMist audit.

Returning to the source of this Bitcoin hot topic, the Ordinals protocol, what exactly is its charm that has gained the attention of many major players such as OKX, and enabled it to single-handedly open up the Bitcoin ecosystem?

Bitcoin's New Narrative, No Longer a Desolate Ecosystem

Ordinals protocol is not the first protocol that attempts to bring NFTs into the Bitcoin world, but it is the first successful one.

This is due to the Bitcoin SegWit and Taproot upgrades, which have increased space and reduced block costs, allowing the Ordinals protocol to emerge.

"Ordinals" is a numbering scheme for the smallest unit of Bitcoin, satoshis. It allows for the tracking and transfer of individual satoshis, which are numbered in the order they are mined. These numbers are called ordinals and follow a first-in, first-out principle. In simple terms, the Ordinals protocol does two things: it assigns numbers to satoshis and allows for data to be written into them, including text, images, and videos (known as inscriptions). This enables the transformation of satoshis into NFTs, with different numbered satoshis having varying degrees of rarity.

You can understand it simply like this: when transferring money with a bank card, each transfer has a unique and traceable number, and all information about who transferred to whom and who received the money is recorded. In addition, when transferring money with a bank card, you can add a "transfer note" which can be filled in randomly and has no effect on the success of the transfer. Therefore, "transfer number + transfer note" is the Ordinals NFT.

Compared with Ethereum NFT, Ordinals NFT content is on-chain and cannot be tampered with after creation, with advantages such as simplicity and security. However, there are also disadvantages such as high transaction fees, low programmability, and difficulty in verifying authenticity.

Ordinals protocol inspired Twitter user @domodata, who believes that the Ordinals protocol can issue non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as well as fungible tokens (FTs). Based on Ordinals, @domodata introduced the FT issuance standard - BRC20. The inscriptions identified by BRC20 are uniform JAON format text data, including deployment, minting, transfer, etc. Now, ORDI, PEPE, and other tokens that have increased in value by hundreds or thousands of times are all based on BRC-20 issuance.

According to OKX BRC-20 browser data, the current number of Ordi holders is 9,168, with the largest holding address holding 482,000 Ordi, accounting for 2.3% of the total holdings.

However, no matter what, the Bitcoin ecosystem is no longer barren, and "a spark has ignited a prairie fire".

Infrastructure missing, trading platforms quickly fill the gap

The Bitcoin ecosystem is becoming increasingly hot, but the problem of missing infrastructure and auxiliary tools is gradually being exposed.

Unlike Ethereum, which is known as a "decentralized global computer" and supports smart contracts, Bitcoin does not support smart contracts and has a natural barrier to issuing NFTs. Currently, the Ethereum ecosystem is very prosperous, with a mature NFT trading market, while the Bitcoin ecosystem is just beginning to explore and can only be traded through over-the-counter or rudimentary third-party platforms, with incomplete infrastructure.

Undoubtedly, this is an opportunity for a powerful development team. In the challenging stage of the Bitcoin ecosystem, Ordinals has gained support from top global exchanges and Web3 platform OKX. OKX founder Xu Mingxing has continuously expressed his support on Twitter, and OKX's multiple product lines have been actively exploring users' deep and constantly changing needs, starting to focus on Bitcoin infrastructure.

On May 12th, OKX announced a partnership with Bitcoin-based UniSat Wallet to jointly establish the BRC-20 industry standard. The two parties will work together to build infrastructure for BRC-20 and ORC-20, including wallets, markets, liquidity exchanges, and browsers. Currently, OKX has launched a BRC-20 browser that supports viewing token details, holding details, and transfer details.

In addition, following the launch of support for displaying and transferring Ordinal NFTs, OKX Web3 wallet will soon support many other exciting features such as trading Ordinal NFTs. OKX Web3 wallet has put a lot of effort into supporting BRC-20, and users can easily mint and trade Ordinals NFTs through its NFT marketplace without having to set up a Bitcoin node, simplifying the cumbersome process and saving costs, while also avoiding security risks in off-exchange transactions. In addition, it also supports users in easily viewing and managing their assets. Especially during congested Bitcoin network transactions, users can independently arrange transaction rhythms through OKX Web3 wallet, and all BTC transactions support acceleration and cancellation, allowing users to seize trading opportunities.

OKX NFT market previously launched the first Bitcoin Ordinal NFT authentic collection, Bitcoin Punks. Users can not only freely trade BTC NFTs using ETH or other ERC20 tokens through this collection, enjoying convenient transaction services, but also avoid purchasing fake NFTs or causing asset losses through private transactions, which is very safe.

UniSat founder Lorenzo mentioned in an interview with BlockBeats that "OKX has had in-depth technical communication with us, which shows that they have been involved in the research and development of BRC-20 since early on, providing us with many helpful ideas in public indexing and cross-validation." It can be seen that OKX has already keenly captured and begun to lay out the BRC-20 infrastructure.

According to informed sources, OKX is establishing a BRC-20 parsing standard and undergoing a SlowMist audit.

All of the above shows OKX's emphasis on the Bitcoin ecosystem. In the early stages of the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem, there is currently no standard or reference due to issues such as a lack of collection concepts, high entry barriers, high development difficulty, and expensive transaction fees. However, with its keen sense and strong development capabilities, OKX has once again become a leader in industry development standards, providing users with a low-threshold and convenient trading experience, continuously building the BTC ecosystem, and injecting strong confidence into the market.

Behind the success of OKX's deep mining lies half of its innovative spirit in actively embracing industry changes, constantly exploring users' deep and ever-changing needs, and implementing them into products; the other half is attributed to its clear product roadmap: CeFi business leads the industry security standards with better user experience, while Web3 business leads the industry innovation standards with lower barriers to entry.

For the Web3 platform, whoever can first reduce the entry barrier for industry participation and solve user pain points will become the industry standard. Presumably, if OKX is a "giant in thought but a dwarf in action", it will certainly not achieve industry-leading product experience and reputation, and become an industry pioneer. Every effortless success is based on down-to-earth efforts.

Ecological Project Status

Ordinals NFT, for the first time since its inception in 2009, has been used for purposes beyond peer-to-peer transfers, giving rise to a large number of players.

According to brc-20.io data restrictions, as of the time of writing, the total number of FT tokens issued based on the BRC-20 standard is as high as 24,637, with a total market value of 473,606,411 US dollars. MEME coins, represented by ORDI and PEPE, have seen gains of tens of thousands of times.

According to Dune Analytics data, as of the time of writing, the total number of inscriptions cast based on the Ordinals protocol has exceeded 7 million, and the inscription casting volume on May 7 alone exceeded 400,000, once again reaching a historical high. The cumulative casting fee has exceeded 35 million US dollars. According to OKX BRC-20 browser data, the number of active addresses on the Bitcoin network is as high as 813,581, and its ecosystem has received unprecedented attention. For example, it has attracted well-known NFT giants such as Yuga Labs to participate, and based on Ordinals, it has launched a NFT project called TwelveFold.

However, due to the surge in transaction volume, the congestion of the Bitcoin network has intensified, and transaction fees have skyrocketed. Block times have been delayed multiple times to over 1 hour, causing Binance to even suspend BTC withdrawals. However, OKEx, which had already laid out the Bitcoin Lightning Network two years ago, has not been affected for the time being.

The rise of the Bitcoin ecosystem is gradually becoming apparent. Although it is still early, there are some "prophetic" projects that have taken root in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Currently, some projects that have been observed and shared are only for sharing purposes and do not constitute any investment advice.

For example, there are Bitcoin-native NFTs such as TwelveFold from NFT giant Yuga Labs and Taproot Wizards originating from community culture; there are NFT trading markets such as Gamma, OpenOrde, and Ordswap; there are wallets that support the Bitcoin ecosystem such as Unisat and OKX Web3, as well as Gamma and OKX BRC-20 browser https://www.okx.com/cn/explorer/btc that provide on-chain data analysis.

With the improvement of Ordinals related infrastructure, the heat of the Bitcoin ecosystem will continue to rise.

However, despite the popularity of Ordinals and BRC20, and the countless MEME wealth creation myths, it is undoubtedly the case that FOMO emotions outweigh value logic.

When selectively participating in projects, it is still important to carefully choose and add an extra layer of "insurance", such as examining the project team, community activity, MEME strength, on-chain data, and other dimensions. In addition, it is also important to learn how to use tools such as OKX Web3 wallet to reduce participation costs and obtain more secure services.

Future Development

When a small group of people enjoy the enormous wealth brought by Ordinals-based MEME currency ORDI, most people are still anxiously spinning in the "new concept, high threshold" castle and starting to FOMO.

Ordinals protocol's success has brought about conflicts and divisions within the Bitcoin community.

Supporters believe that Ordinals bring innovation and solve the problem of declining miner income caused by Bitcoin halving, bringing positive effects to Bitcoin. Opponents see Ordinals NFT as an "attack" that undermines the legitimacy and security of Bitcoin, dilutes the value of Bitcoin, and causes the problem of wasted block resources due to meaningless transactions, bringing negative effects. In short, the two sides are at odds.

Who is right and who is wrong? What is right and what is wrong? When facing new things, we cannot let our value logic lead the way, otherwise it is easy to fall into the emotional trap of "not seeing, looking down upon, not understanding, and not having time", and miss opportunities. Instead, we should observe the market and see how it chooses.

• Short-term: Despite the publisher's emphasis that Ordinals and BRC20 are only experimental, the market is still crazy, indicating that the market undoubtedly chooses to support Ordinals in the short term;

• Mid-term: Ordinals did indeed strengthen the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem, but the infrastructure needs improvement and the development cycle and difficulty are highly uncertain. In the mid-term, the market is likely to chase after other hotspots.

• Long-term: With the emergence of better tools and standards built by OKX, the Bitcoin NFT ecosystem may take off or it may just be a passing fad, with Bitcoin continuing to be referred to as "digital gold".

These are all possible outcomes, so one cannot base their trades on their own decisions, but rather make trades based on the market.

From the day of its birth, Bitcoin has been accompanied by value and bubbles, freedom and restrictions, innovation and tradition, and has always had a dual nature. However, no matter which direction Bitcoin ultimately develops in, it is determined by community consensus, not Satoshi Nakamoto.