Muneeb Ali, CEO of Trust Machines, describes how the hype around Ordinals could help Bitcoin by luring more investors and engineers to layer-2 solutions.
A new wave of upheaval is now impacting Bitcoin with the introduction of the Ordinals protocol. The protocol allows nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to be added to the Bitcoin blockchain as digital content. This change has increased network traffic and sparked worries about transaction costs.
Increased transaction prices have resulted from an increase in network traffic with the launch of Ordinals NFTs on the Bitcoin mainnet in January 2023. There are currently more than 286,000 pending transactions in the Bitcoin mempool, which is where they wait to be processed. This is still a historically high amount, despite the fact that it is lower than the peak reached earlier in the month.
Encouraging Developer Engagement
Ali stressed the significance of Bitcoin in luring leading programmers and researchers to layer-2 solutions. As the most valuable asset, Bitcoin should make the most of its potential and encourage creative scaling solutions to deal with the network’s problems.
Although Ordinals NFTs have disrupted the market, there is still room for Bitcoin to develop and adapt. The growing activity and attention surrounding digital material on the Bitcoin blockchain may open the door for additional innovation, development, and funding of layer-2 solutions.
There is a $500 billion market potential untapped on the BTC network, claims Ali, referring to BTC’s current market capitalization of $521 billion.
Related: Total mintage fees for Bitcoin Ordinals have increased by 700% since April.
