What are Ethscriptions and does it Mean Bitcoin Ordinals are Dead?
What are Ethscriptions? | Credit: Shutterstock
- With the Ethscriptions protocol, users of Ethereum now have another option for producing nonfungible tokens (NFTs)
- Any sort of file can be inscribed by users as long as it is under 96 kilobytes in size
- It’s not yet apparent whether Ethscriptions will gain as much popularity as Bitcoin Ordinals has
The Ethereum community has shown much interest in a new protocol called Ethscriptions, which enables users to create and share digital things on the Ethereum blockchain.
Ethscriptions, which are similar to the Ordinals project on the Bitcoin network, allow users to directly encrypt non-financial data under 96 kilobytes in size, primarily photographs for the time being.
Ethscriptions a ‘Huge Success’ Already at the Launch
The project, established by Tom Lehman, co-founder of the music website Genius.com, garnered significant interest, with approximately 30,000 Ethscriptions being issued in less than 18 hours following its introduction on June 17.
Lehman tweeted several times under the handle ‘Middlemarch’ to call the initiative a “huge success”.
Cheaper and More Decentralised Minting Process With Calldata
The Ethereum “calldata”—the information included in a smart contract—is used by the protocol, which is thought to be less expensive and more decentralized than using contract storage. Even if some contend that similar technology has existed for a while, the widespread awareness and acceptance of Ethscriptions signal a new development in the Ethereum community’s willingness to try new things.
Users can only post images at the moment, but according to Lehman, the protocol will eventually let the submission of other file types. Right now, as long as an image is smaller than 96 kilobytes in size, users can currently “ethscribe” any image.
“Ethereum Punks ,” Lehman’s first initiative using the Ethscriptions protocol, received a remarkably enthusiastic reception from the community, with all 10,000 assets being claimed almost immediately.
Lehman noted that the project’s launch attracted so many users that the official Ethscriptions website’s API interface briefly collapsed.
Will It Become Popular More Than Ordinals?
Ethscriptions’ launch has been compared to Bitcoin’s launch of Ordinals, which introduced NFT-style graphics and non-financial data to the main chain’s ledger.
The total number of Ordinals written on Bitcoin increased from 0 to 12 million in less than six months. Users’ enthusiasm for the novelty of being able to create assets, which eventually included whole new tokens via the BRC-20 token standard, on the Bitcoin network was a major factor in the massive rise in activity.
In January 2023, the Ordinals protocol was introduced. It quickly became the most well-liked method for creating new things or recording information on the Bitcoin network.
The total number of ordinal inscriptions for Bitcoin has topped 10 million as of May. The majority of them were created in the most recent month. Over 12,8 million Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions have been made as of the time of the Dune research .
However, transactions are still being processed by the network. According to Dune , the vast majority of the inscriptions are written in text. Due to the fact that they are far smaller than inscriptions based on images or videos, this is assisting in reducing block sizes.
It, therefore, seems that Ordinals are pretty popular since, just recently, a group of Bitcoiners celebrated the expensive, eye-catching undertaking of permanently removing a pricey Ethereum NFT from circulation and symbolically tying it to an Ordinals inscription from one of Web3’s premier PFP collections.
According to Etherescan , CryptoPunk #8611 sold for about 55 Ethereum, or $95,000, on Saturday. The NFT was destroyed a few hours later in a manner that is suggestive of the inscription 12,456,749 , a Bitcoin asset that resembles an NFT and has the same image as its predecessor.
ETH Price Jumps Over $1,700
Over the weekend, bulls put on a brief but outstanding performance that caused Ethereum’s price to soar to $1,769.
Investors are kicking off the European session on Monday as the second-largest cryptocurrency was rising by 0.06% at the time of writing. Along with moving into the lower $1,700 range, a number of buy indications are developing to support larger price moves.
The 200-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA), which is used to indicate short-term support, shows that the price of Ethereum is currently trading at $1,723. The bulls are steadfast above a reliable ascending trendline.
This kind of experimentation has received more support and enthusiasm from the Ethereum community. Due to the huge amount of user interest, Ethscriptions occasionally faced downtime periods. Lehman apologized for the technical difficulties.
Conclusion
The continued adoption and engagement of the community will determine the Ethscriptions protocol’s lifespan and impact within the community.
The protocol guarantees the universal uniqueness of all legitimate Ethscriptions, laying the groundwork for future advancements in a Layer 2 world.
Ethscriptions has made a promising start, enticing both new and old users to investigate its features, despite occasionally being offline owing to excessive demand.
