The OKX NFT marketplace saw over $50 million in volume in the 24 hours ending at 2 PM Hong Kong time. The volumes surpassed popular rivals OpenSea and pro-focused NFT marketplace Blur.
OKX’s higher volume came from its support of Bitcoin Ordinals NFTs and BRC-20 tokens. NFT Transaction volume on Bitcoin rose to $121.8 million between December 10 and December 17, 2023.
Bitcoin Ordinals Rise on OKX Success
OKX’s trading volume beat rivals Blur, Magic Eden, UniSat, and OpenSea, which recorded volumes of $13.21 million, $7.63 million, $3.82 million, and $3.25 million in the same period. Magic Eden, the Solana NFT marketplace, supports Bitcoin Ordinals, unlike Blur and OpenSea.
Read more: Top 9 OpenSea Alternatives in 2024
One developer attributes the overnight surge to OKX’s focus on the BRC-20 token standard. OKX worked with UniSat, a developer of Ordinals wallets, to create an indexing mechanism for BRC-20 transactions built on ordinal inscriptions. A blockchain explorer soon followed.
The Ordinals protocol, made possible by the Bitcoin Taproot upgrade, allows digital files to be inscribed on satoshis, the smallest monetary denomination on the Bitcoin network. Each of these satoshis has a unique number, an ordinal, that is immutably connected to a transaction. Developer Casey Rodarmor released Ordinals to much debate in January 2023.
Ordinals differ from traditional NFTs because they are not smart contracts pointing to a digital asset. Instead, Rodarmor refers to them as digital artifacts. Their lack of smart contract features means their trading necessitates decentralized exchanges and wallets.
Read more: How To Create an NFT for Free Using Picsart
Ordinals Incentivize Miners
Earlier this year, Galaxy Research predicted that Bitcoin Ordinals could form a $3.5 billion market by 2025. Magic Eden allows Ordinals traders to exchange their inscriptions without using an over-the-counter method. The most traded Ordinals projects in the past 24 hours are MNCHRMs (0.91 BTC), followed by Ordinookis (0.003 BTC).
Adam Back, the CEO of Blockstream, a Bitcoin infrastructure provider, has slammed Ordinals as a waste of Bitcoin transaction blockspace. Others have praised the protocol for creating more transactions that generate transaction fees needed to incentivize miners to secure the network. Over 49 million transactions have generated over 2250 BTC in transaction fees.
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