Ordinals, a controversial new project that lets users put NFT-like media assets on the Bitcoin blockchain, is seeing surging activity this week. On Thursday, Ordinals recorded its largest number of single-day mints—but network fees are apparently growing as a result.
More than 1,000 total Bitcoin NFTs have been minted via Ordinals, according to public blockchain data curated by Dune, topping that total on Thursday as 420 new “inscriptions” were made on the blockchain. That’s more than three times the amount of NFTs minted on Bitcoin via the process on Wednesday.
However, Thursday also marked the highest average transaction fee on Bitcoin in more than a month, landing at $1.53 worth of BTC per data from YCharts. That’s the highest it’s been since December 27, 2022
The launch of Ordinals revived the heated and long-standing debate in the Bitcoin space about block sizes, legitimate transactions, and whether JPEGs and other media should be inscribed on the original blockchain. Thanks to the Taproot upgrade, Ordinals has allowed anything from knock-off