Aiming at the next bull market opportunity: Ordinals ecosystem; SuperEx launches PIPE trading pairs
Bitcoin, as the first cryptocurrency project, has built a secure, decentralized, and censorship-resistant network, earning widespread public trust and becoming a major heavyweight in the blockchain world. However, despite its great success in security, decentralization, and anti-censorship, its basic layer is relatively simple, which means it has certain functional limitations. To this day, Bitcoin’s primary use remains value transfer.
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This situation began to change with the emergence of the Ordinals protocol. The release of the Ordinals protocol made it possible to create NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain, which has attracted widespread attention. This innovation has brought more potential and future possibilities to Bitcoin, as well as new options for users.
Since the launch of this protocol, more than 27 million Ordinals have been recorded, and their trading volume has even surpassed well-known NFT platforms like Magic Eden. This has even, to some extent, driven the rise in the price of Bitcoin.
So what exactly is the principle of Ordinals? And what is its relationship with BRC-20? This article will comprehensively sort out the Bitcoin Ordinals ecosystem for readers.
The Origin of Ordinals: Bitcoin NFT
Many friends may be familiar with ORDI, which has seen a performance going from an issuance price of 0.1 USDT to a high of 10 USDT within a single month, a true 100x coin. It is the token of the Ordinals protocol.
Ordinals is an open-source protocol that assigns a unique identity to each of Bitcoin’s smallest units, satoshis (sat). The protocol uses an ordinal system to track the position and history of each sat, allowing users to track each sat and add content to it using Ord software, creating Bitcoin-native digital products.
Unlike Colored Coins or most Ethereum NFTs, Bitcoin Ordinals digital products are stored entirely on the Bitcoin blockchain, not elsewhere on the internet. This means that compared to traditional NFTs, Bitcoin Ordinals digital products are more secure, without the need to rely on external services for storage and management.
We can understand it simply:
We know there are 21 million Bitcoins, and one Bitcoin can be split into 100 million satoshis, so 21 million Bitcoins can be divided into 21 trillion satoshis. Originally, Bitcoin was homogeneous, meaning my Bitcoin in my wallet is no different from yours, but now an idea has been proposed — what if each satoshi was numbered? Then everything would be different, wouldn’t it?
The word “ordinals” essentially means “ordinal numbers,” and what the Ordinals protocol does is give each sat a unique number starting from zero, making each sat unique.
Since information can be written into a Bitcoin block, the numbered sat naturally becomes an NFT, as long as any form of information, such as text, images, audio, or video, is written into it, it becomes a work of art. Moreover, this work of art is eternal, unalterable, and as long as Bitcoin exists, it will not disappear.
The sat with information written into it is still a Bitcoin sat, akin to carving on a brick of gold. Its original value does not change, and now it has the artistic value of the carving. Simply put, you can think of Bitcoin NFT as a tattooed sat.
Therefore, the Ordinals NFT protocol numbers SATs according to the order they are mined, supports writing text, images, and audiovisual content into SATs to create uniquely styled NFTs, and can be viewed through the browser ordinals explorer. This action is called “Inscriptions.” The channel through which inscriptions are passed is known as BRC-20.
Exploration of Ordinals: The Birth of the BRC-20 Protocol
As with most novel projects in the cryptocurrency realm, Ordinals sparked interest and hype. Two months after the release of the Ordinals protocol, Twitter user @domodata proposed a Bitcoin Token standard on the Ordinals protocol — the BRC20 standard. Utilizing JSON data of Ordinals inscriptions, @domodata deployed token contracts, minted, and transferred tokens.
The BRC20 standard can be seen as an application-type NFT for Ordinals, akin to a check, but without smart contracts. Through BRC-20, we can issue tokens based on blockchain technology and transfer between them.
For Ordinals, the BRC-20 protocol allows us to sequence sats and assign an ordinal to them. Simply put, the Ordinals protocol assigns a unique number to each sat.
We can attach specific information to these sats, such as images, text, code, etc., making each sat unique. When the information we add to these sats is attached according to a unified protocol standard, these sats become what we call BRC-20 tokens.
It is understood that BRC-20 tokens are established based on the Ordinals protocol and the BTC unit sats. This token standard has better compatibility and interoperability compared to traditional token standards, thus gaining recognition and use by more and more people.
The Exploration of BRC-20: The Birth of PIPE
PIPE is a Bitcoin-native token protocol, and the first token in its ecosystem is — PIPE. PIPE is inspired by Casey Rodarmor’s RUNES and the BRC-20 concept from Ordinal. Like BRC-20, PIPE consists of three “functions”: deployment, minting, and transfer, hence PIPE is a DMT. Deploy indicates that a new token has been deployed, while Mint allows for minting from that token according to the deployed rules (supply, restrictions).
Since RUNES does not allow for fair mints, which is an important aspect of BRC-20’s, and potentially makes all its tokens securities due to centralized distribution, PIPE tries to combine the strengths of both ideas.
SuperEx will launch PIPE trading pairs, opening a way for users to participate in the Ordinal and aim for the next bull market.
According to official news from SuperEx, the platform will officially launch PIPE trading pairs in November 2023.
The Ordinals protocol has introduced new functions to Bitcoin that were never realized before, including smart contracts and the creation of tokens. With the continuous development of Bitcoin’s underlying technology, we can expect that new functionalities will make inscriptions more efficient, secure, and versatile. Future Bitcoin upgrades may introduce new mechanisms, and whether it’s Ordi, BRC-20, or PIPE, they will all be new chapters in the development of the Bitcoin network and blockchain technology.
