Bitcoin’s network activity reached levels not seen since 2017 following the explosive growth in Ordinals Inscriptions this month.
Data from “@dgtl_assets” Dune dashboard shows that the number of daily Ordinals Inscriptions hit an all-time high of 307,365 on Sunday – the sixth time the daily record was breached in April.
In total, more than 2.7 million inscriptions have been created to date and several industry watchers expect this figure to keep growing over the next few weeks.
We hit one million ordinal inscriptions less than three weeks ago.
Today we hit two million.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if we hit three million by the end of next week.
Ordinals are going parabolic. pic.twitter.com/k9pMWBtEch
— Leonidas (@LeonidasNFT) April 28, 2023
Ordinals are essentially Bitcoin NFTs, with inscriptions representing on-chain data stored in the Bitcoin blockchain. This data is mapped to a non-fungible satoshi, or “sat,” using Ordinal Theory.
When the project was first created, image-based inscriptions were the most popular type of ordinals created. However, text-based inscriptions now account for more than 95% of daily total inscriptions.
Read more: US Government Labels Bitcoin Ordinals’ Inscriptions a Code Exploit
The dramatic rise in text-based inscriptions was triggered after users discovered a way to mint fungible tokens using the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol. The so-called “BRC-20” token standard lets users mint and transfers tokens through the Bitcoin blockchain. Unsurprisingly, this led to the creation of thousands of fungible meme coins that conform to BRC-20.
Still, many believe that the growth and innovation around the Ordinals protocol significantly benefits the Bitcoin ecosystem. The network’s seven-day average of daily transactions surged to a five year high on Sunday, data from IntoTheBlock shows.
The 7-day average of daily Bitcoin transactions was at its highest this week since December 2017. The increasing number of daily transactions suggests growing active usage of the Bitcoin blockchain pic.twitter.com/zKWUM8Vw5P
— IntoTheBlock (@intotheblock) April 30, 2023
In a blog post last week, crypto investment firm Grayscale suggested that ordinals could increase Bitcoin miner fees and potentially transform the culture within the Bitcoin community.
“Although ordinals are a recent development, they have already amassed over one million inscriptions within a mere four months, even during a bear market. This unexpected surge in popularity may indicate a shift in the broader perception of Bitcoin, despite its reputation as an ossified blockchain,” said Grayscale.
