Average weekly transaction volume fell to the lowest since February at ~283,000, following a record high of ~600,000 recorded on September 20th. The drop occurred simultaneously with a reduction in activity in the Ordinals segment, writes The Block.
In March 2023, a developer under the pseudonym domo introduced BRC-20, an experimental standard for fungible tokens for the Bitcoin blockchain. A month later, the capitalization of assets created on its basis exceeded $1 billion.
At the end of August, the share of Bitcoin NFT-related transactions on the network reached 85%. In September, Ordinals and BRC-20 filled digital gold blocks to 100%.
Since the launch of the protocol, 35.2 million inscriptions have been created with a total volume of 13.1 GB. Miners received 1312 BTC as commissions.
According to Dune Analytics, since the end of September, the number of new Ordinals has dropped to April levels.
The Block analyst Rebecca Stevens linked the decline in the metric to the proposal of an alternative to the BRC-20.
At the end of September, Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmore introduced a new standard of fungible tokens – Runes. The latter does not leave “garbage” in the Bitcoin network, which is typical for its predecessor.
Stevens also pointed to community concerns about erroneous inscription numbers in response to calls to reindex the Ordinals, which could impact existing collections.
“Users may be holding back from activity until this is resolved,” Stevens explained.
Let us recall that in May, Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dash Jr. proposed introducing a “spam filter” for BRC-20 and Ordinals standard tokens due to their negative impact on the network.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, on the contrary, supported the protocol for launching Bitcoin NFTs, calling its emergence the return of “creator culture” to the blockchain of the first cryptocurrency.
Found an error in the text? Select it and press CTRL+ENTER
ForkLog newsletters: keep your finger on the pulse of the Bitcoin industry!