Yet today the NFT market, engulfed by a loud but active minority of self-important participants, is deeply plagued despite the hype. A closer look reveals there are some pretty fundamental reasons why the entire infrastructure around NFTs—the ways they’re created, stored, and traded—is flawed. Recent ground-breaking advancements using Bitcoin inscriptions and new peer-to-peer platforms seek to solve these problems and reinvent the entire NFT ecosystem.
2021 was the height of the NFT market’s hype cycle. Because most of the files making up NFTs live on centralized servers, that opens up a huge attack vector. Regular NFTs are mainly focused on ownership and permanent links to digital goods, which is a huge difference compared to the permanence of Bitcoin inscriptions. Tens of thousands of Bitcoin nodes currently hold these inscriptions, guaranteeing their on-chain permanence.
Ordinals and Inscriptions present an intriguing alternative. And these inscriptions are intentionally and permanently recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain. This removes the dependency on the centralized servers, which are the hallmark of traditional NFTs.
As Nick, the co-founder of Gamma, has put it before, we know the NFT market discovery process is broken. He placed emphasis on the need for more efficient, less duplicative and more transparent mechanisms. This is where Signals comes in, addressing the problems inherent with the traditional whitelist approach.
Signals employs an auction clearing price model. This new method aims to increase transparency and price discovery while improving access. Signals’ connection to the art world offers a unique opportunity for artists and collectors to dive deeper into the world of Bitcoin-secured digital assets.
Arch Network wants to combine the speed of Solana and the overall crypto user experience to Bitcoin. This integration would be a monumental step towards improving the user experience tied to Bitcoin NFTs. Ordinals & Inscriptions are powerful and contentious concepts and technologies, and they were the main discussion point at the recent Inscribing Vegas conference. It was a great opportunity for industry experts and excited enthusiasts to dive into the promise and peril of this rapidly emerging technology.
Blockspace, a media platform with a website (https://blockspace.media/) and a newsletter (https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com), covers these developments. It’s your independent guide to understanding the analysis, trends, and opportunities in the fast-changing world of Bitcoin NFTs.
