Ordinals – a controversial new protocol based on Bitcoin – is making its mark on the chain with a record number of transactions linked to taproot, according to the data provider blockchain glassnode.
Nonetheless, there is still a heated debate within the Bitcoin community about whether technology should be celebrated or cursed.
Popularizing computer systems.
Ordinals were conceived by Bitcoin Core contributor Casey Rodarmor as a means to identify individual satoshis on the network. Satoshis are the smallest unit of a bitcoin (one hundredth of a bitcoin), named after the creator of Bitcoin satoshi nakamoto.
These satoshis may include unique engraved data such as videos and pictures – a process called registration. This means that transactions may contain content similar to NFT in a satoshi, and be stored in the transaction signature after the transfer is complete. The technology is enabled by Taproot – a Bitcoin softfork upgrade that activated in 2021 bringing greater privacy and smart contracts to the network.
As tweeted by Glassnode on Monday, 2.8% of spent outputs on Bitcoin utilized Taproot script this week, as opposed to 1% just a month ago.
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This push has massively increased the measure of adoption of the taproot of Glassnode to a historical peak of 7.47%, and its measure of use of the taproot to 2.84%. Meanwhile, Ordinals itself logged its largest number of single day NFT mints on Sunday, with the number only on a clear uptrend.
Many Bitcoin developers are opposed to the rising use of Bitcoin block space for this purpose, including Adam Back, who called it a “sheer waste and stupidity of an encoding.”
Lightning Usage Rising
Bitcoin’s lightning network is also seeing increased activity as of late, with network capacity surging to an all-time high of 5,354 BTC on Monday. At current prices, it is $123 million locked inside the layer 2 network – which enhances the speed and profitability of Bitcoin transactions without inflating the blockchain.
The number of lightning network nodes has recently exceeded 16,000, and the number of open channels has risen to 76,554.
Lightning Labs is currently building a protocol called Taro with the hope of bringing tokenized assets – like NFTs and stablecoins – to Bitcoin’s lightning network.