As of April 28, 2023, the number of Ordinal inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain has exceeded 2 million, according to current statistics. This milestone has been reached within just over four months since the first Ordinal inscription was minted on December 16, 2022, at block height 767,753. In total, inscription minting fees have amounted to 196.22 bitcoin, equivalent to $5.78 million.
More Than 2 Million Ordinal Inscriptions Are Now Engraved Into the Bitcoin Blockchain
The trend of Ordinal inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain continues to grow, with over 2,116,396 inscriptions discovered at the time of writing. These inscriptions are composed of various formats such as text, video, images, applications, and audio.
Dune Analytics statistics reveal that 67.6% of all inscriptions are in text form, while 22.6% are images in the form of JPG or PNG files. Moreover, more than 13,000 Ordinal inscriptions include an application, and over 6,000 image inscriptions are animated. There are several collections of Ordinal inscriptions that have gained popularity and have established floor values and weekly trade volumes.
According to data from ordinalswallet.com, the highest trade volume this week was observed for Clay Pepes, with 4.57 BTC or $134,082 in seven-day trade volume. The collections following Clay Pepes in terms of trade volume are Sub-100K, Bitcoin Punks, Pixel Pepes, Sub-10K, and BTC Machines, respectively. While the Ordinal inscription trend surpassed 2 million inscriptions, it coincided with the discovery of a bug that resulted in the orphaning of 1,200 inscriptions from the index.
Leonidas.og, a historian of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), explained that the orphaned inscriptions occurred just before inscription number 420,285. “The bug was caused by the ordinals protocol only counting inscriptions that were in the first input of a transaction,” the NFT historian added. Furthermore, even with the introduction of new blockchain features such as Bitcoin Stamps and Litecoin-based Ordinal inscriptions, the trend of BTC-based Ordinal inscriptions has not been affected.
Currently, there are just over 18,500 stamps on the Bitcoin blockchain since the project’s inception. On the other hand, Litecoin Ordinal inscriptions have seen more activity with 224,060 inscriptions, but the trend of LTC-based inscriptions has slowed down in recent times. Despite the introduction of these new features, the popularity of Ordinal inscriptions continues to grow, indicating a strong and resilient market for this type of digital collectible scheme.
What do you think the future holds for the Ordinal inscription trend on the Bitcoin blockchain? Will we see continued growth in popularity, or will it eventually plateau? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.