With the explosion of NFTs, Bitcoin has emerged as the most valuable infrastructure for the peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Early attempts to build NFT projects on the Bitcoin network failed due to its fundamental principles and the design of the peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Fortunately, Ethereum took up the narrative of NFTs and sparked the grand NFT Summer wave, further accelerating the integration of Web3 and the physical economy. However, the first NFT wave came to an end with the arrival of the bear market, plunging into a long period of silence. As time passed and market conditions changed, the NFT market entered a phase of recovery, and both Bitcoin NFTs and Ethereum NFTs experienced a reversal in positioning.
After the Bitcoin Taproot upgrade and Segwit expansion, more data can be stored on the chain. Ordinals, created by Casey Rodarmor, allows for the numbering and storage of data such as text, images, and videos in Bitcoin’s smallest unit, satoshis (SATS). NFT assets can now be minted, transferred, and burned in SATS transactions, marking the official beginning of the NFT narrative. Compared to Ethereum NFTs, Bitcoin NFTs are stored directly on the chain, offering higher fairness, decentralization, and security enabled by the Bitcoin network. However, the Bitcoin network lacks the Turing-complete smart contract functionality of Ethereum, so Bitcoin NFTs do not support complex custom configurations and have limited storage space. Nevertheless, the Bitcoin ecosystem has paved the way and is moving towards NFT infrastructure. During the peak period, BTC NFTs’ 24-hour trading volume surpassed that of Ethereum’s ETH.
With the emergence of Bitcoin NFTs and the narrative of Ordinals, the NFT market landscape has undergone significant changes. The OKX NFT market was the first to respond to user demand and launched the OKX Ordinals market, quickly gaining a dominant position in the market. According to Dune data, on January 30th, the OKX Ordinals market accounted for 89.3% of the market share, with a total transaction volume exceeding $1 billion, making it the largest BRC20 and BTC NFT trading market in the industry. Additionally, the OKX NFT market will integrate standards such as DRC-20 and ARC-20 at the end of February, continuing to lead the construction of Bitcoin NFT ecosystem infrastructure. Furthermore, besides Bitcoin NFTs, the OKX NFT market also supports other ecosystems such as Aptos and Solana, accelerating their rise in the NFT market.
With the rise of the narrative of Ordinals and Bitcoin NFTs, NFT users’ attention has shifted from Ethereum to Bitcoin. Previously dominant NFT projects such as BAYC, Azuki, and CryptoPunks could not sustain their high value in the long term and eventually regressed to the mean during the bear market washout. The typical NFT narratives they advocated, such as PFP, art, and rights, have become old stories. At the same time, the “one dominant player” pattern in the NFT market has quietly changed, with some top NFT platforms adhering to traditions while others are emerging as new forces, seeking change amidst the market’s unpredictable fluctuations.
In 2023, the Bitcoin NFT narrative ignited the market, shifting NFT users’ attention from Ethereum to Bitcoin. Market funds began to flow actively, and the leading Bitcoin NFT project, Bitcoin Frogs, surpassed the Ethereum NFT leader, BAYC, in daily trading volume multiple times, sparking a grassroots movement of “redefining fairness” within the community. However, the infrastructure lagging behind Bitcoin cannot meet the users’ demand gap. To address this, OKX NFT, as a platform with technological accumulation and innovation driving its development, was the first to launch the Ordinals market, promptly responding to user demand and achieving exponential user growth. According to Dune data, as of January 30th, the number of users in the Ordinals market has reached 138,704, accounting for 89.3% of the market share, with a total transaction volume exceeding $1 billion, ranking first in the industry.
The OKX Ordinals market is fully decentralized, with no platform service fees for interactions. It supports one-stop transfer, trading, and engraving of BRC-20 and BTC NFTs, and has powerful engraving tools that support users’ batch engraving with a single signature. BTC network engraving can engrave up to 1,200 transactions in one go, while EVM network engraving can automatically engrave up to 50 transactions at once. Users can choose between text mode or hexadecimal mode for engraving single or multiple texts on BTC and mainstream EVM 23 chains. Transactions are automatically sent without the need to import private keys, making it more secure and convenient. In addition to batch engraving, the OKX Ordinals market also supports batch purchases and transfers, allowing simultaneous purchases of BRC-20 tokens and BTC NFTs. It can support up to 10 purchases in a single transaction, eliminating cumbersome steps and improving transaction efficiency.
The cost of minting Bitcoin NFTs is related to data size and minting speed. To solve the two major challenges of high cost and congestion in user interactions on the Bitcoin chain, the OKX Ordinals market optimizes UTXO spending order to further reduce user gas fees. During the listing and purchasing processes, it utilizes encrypted PSBT signatures, disables RBF transactions, and broadcasts transactions from the server to prevent users from being maliciously stuck with low gas fees. In terms of UTXO management, the OKX Ordinals market supports the prevention of invalid UTXO spending and intelligent removal of invalid UTXOs. The platform can automatically identify worthless NFTs, expired BRC-20, and BRC20-S tokens, helping users easily remove them.
In addition to continuously meeting the growing user demands, the OKX Ordinals market has been empowering industry development through open-source initiatives and API upgrades. The API function now supports faster listing through API, with zero transaction fees while enjoying better depth and liquidity. The fully open-source OKX ORD Indexer supports Ordinals protocol parsing and transaction events, NFT data, UTXO status queries, as well as BRC20 protocol parsing and transaction events, balance, and ticker queries, further contributing to the construction of the Bitcoin ecosystem.
The explosion of Bitcoin NFTs has driven the prosperity of NFT ecosystems on various public chains. To support the comprehensive development of the industry, the OKX NFT market has gradually supported recursive NFTs, cursed NFTs, BRC-420 standards, Solana NFTs, Aptos NFTs, and other transactions. It will also integrate ARC-20, SRC-20, Runes, and DRC-20 token standards, becoming the first and most advanced one-stop NFT ecosystem platform in the Web3 industry. It is evident that these diversified measures will allow millions of users to engage in feeless transactions within the expanding world of NFT standards, empowering the OKX NFT market to dominate the industry’s largest NFT market. The decline of the old NFT narrative has paved the way for the rise of new platforms, gradually dismantling the “one dominant player” pattern under Opensea’s rule. Multiple new forces are ushering in an era of diversified development, shaping a new battlefield for NFTs where the brave will be victorious.
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