Number of serial numbers recorded on Bitcoin hits new daily high, The network thanks to the recently launched "Token Standard" for the blockchain.
On April 2, Bitcoin serial numbers reached 58,179 inscriptions, up 83.5% from the all-time high of 31,692 set on March 9, according to Dune Analytics. The surge is believed to be fueled by a “Bitcoin Request for Comments” (BRC-20) token recently created on the Ordinals protocol by an on-chain analyst named Domo under the pseudonym. While Ordinals are non-fungible token (NFT)-like "digital artifacts" that carry data on the Bitcoin network in the form of text, JPEG images, PDF, video, and audio formats, the BRC-20 token standard utilizes the Ordinal inscription to deploy token contracts, mint tokens, and transfer tokens similar to Ethereum’s ERC-20 token standard.
The Taproot soft fork, effective November 14, 2021, brought about the arrival of Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens on Bitcoin. According to the host of the ordinal-focused podcast "Leonidis.og," on April 2 more than 55,000 inscriptions appeared as text-based ordinals, many of which were represented by BRC-20 tokens. In a tweet, Leonidis explained that the April 2 spike was due to a new tool for interacting with BRC-20 tokens launched in the past few days.
"When the BRC-20 was launched a month ago, there was a lot of excitement about it, but eventually the hype died down. During the lull, developers built tools to make it easier to interact with the BRC-20, and now we're seeing ATH's interest. I've said it before and I'll say it again. User experience matters!"
These new tools include Ord.io, UniSat Wallet, and BRC-20.io. According to BRC-20.io, 1,600 tokens have been created since the creation of the BRC-20 standard.
The most popular BRC-20 tokens include “pepe,” “ordi,” and “punk,” with current market caps of $2.5 million, $2.1 million, and $0.9 million, respectively. More than 42,700 BRC-20 tokens were minted in the past 24 hours, most of which came from tokens wzrd, domo, BAYC, meme, and pups. While the market capitalization of BRC-20 tokens is currently less than $10 million, digital asset investment firm Galaxy Digital believes the “Bitcoin NFT” market could reach $4.5 billion by 2025.
Members of the Bitcoin community remain divided on whether ordinals are a good fit for the Bitcoin ecosystem. Proponents such as Dan Held suggest it offers more financial use cases for bitcoin, while others say it strays from Satoshi Nakamoto's vision of bitcoin as a peer-to-peer cash system.
