Publicly traded bitcoin miner Marathon Digital made headlines on Tuesday by creating a unique art piece on Bitcoin’s blockchain.
Unlike traditional NFTs or digital assets, Marathon arranged transactions in a specific pattern within a block, forming a pixelated image when viewed on block indexer websites like Mempool.space. The image, serving as a corporate advertisement for Marathon, quickly spread across the Bitcoin community, showcasing the company’s block template-building and mining capabilities.
Despite sacrificing some transaction fee revenue to prioritize specific transactions for the art piece, Marathon succeeded in boosting public awareness of its mining operations.
The art piece, embedded in block number 836361, earned Marathon 7.972 bitcoins in combined transaction fees and coinbase rewards, reaffirming the profitability of its mining endeavors.
While the image received attention, some Bitcoin enthusiasts humorously noted minor imperfections, such as a one-pixel misalignment and rendering issues on certain block indexers. Nevertheless, the message was effectively conveyed to thousands of observers. Marathon’s ability to create custom graphics directly within Bitcoin’s blockchain, without relying on NFT or similar protocols, highlights its control over its mining pool and block templates.