Bitcoin Miners have earned more than $5 million by creating non-fungible token (NFT) inscriptions using the Ordinals protocol. Transaction fees on Ordinals transactions surged 240% from $1.5 million on March 10 to $5.2 million on April 12, according to Dune Analytics.
The uptick follows a relatively slow period between February 16 and March 10, from $1 million to $1.5 million. This follows the Ordinals protocol hitting the $1 million mark in fees within the first four weeks of its launch on January 21. Nearly 1.1 million ordinals were recorded on the Bitcoin network, mostly in JPEG images and text, but also in PDF, video and audio formats.
Each Bitcoin block processes approximately 100 to 500 inscriptions and typically contains 2,000 to 3,000 transactions. A record 3,785 inscriptions appeared in block 783,758 on April 3, accounting for nearly 87% of the entire block. Online community platform Reddit launched its third (generation 3) NFT on April 12 a "future reality collection" of collection avatars created by more than 100 artists.
In its announcement, Reddit explained that the artists behind each limited-edition avatar will receive royalties on each sale, and no cryptocurrency will be required to purchase them. However, this version is not without its problems. Many Reddit users claimed they missed out on the sale because the spam bots hit it almost instantly.
Many also believe that the bots were the reason why Reddit's NFT store crashed shortly after launch. "They don't incorporate any type of spam or bot prevention measures like simple captchas. Of course the site is overloaded," wrote one user, while another commented, "You guys can't have thought of that in this Stop the bot during the second dip." Twitter user "Pastel Alpha" tweeted that they managed to get a "large amount" of NFTs "even though the site is completely dead," and thanked its "robot partner" for helping with the shipment. Reddit previously released a batch of Halloween-themed avatars in October 2022, followed by a Super Bowl avatar in February.
