Ordinals, a project initially launched on the Bitcoin blockchain early this year to enable users to inscribe NFTs, is now supporting the mint of fungible tokens and has expanded to other proof-of-work (PoW) networks, including Dogecoin and Litecoin. The three blockchains have seen increased activity causing network fees to surge significantly.
On Friday, these PoW networks collectively processed more than two million daily transactions: 1.12 million on Dogecoin, 579,540 on Bitcoin and 363,880 on Litecoin, according to BitInfoCharts data. It’s worth highlighting that each blockchain has marked its new all-time high in terms of daily transactions this month.
So how did Ordinals get imported to Dogecoin and Litecoin? Here is how: The three networks are related. Litecoin is a hard fork of Bitcoin, while Dogecoin was developed based on Litecoin’s code. That means they share a technology that supports the Ordinals project.
Ordinals developer drew inspiration from Ethereum’s ERC-20 token standard, which facilitates the creation of fungible tokens, to build BRC-20 for Bitcoin, LTC-20 for Litecoin and DRC-20 for Dogecoin. Despite these token standards being in the experimental stage, the tokens created have already reached a collective market cap of $1 billion.
Let’s now look at the history and the impact of Ordinals on each blockchain.
Bitcoin Ordinals
In late January, Web3 developer Casey Rodamor launched the Ordinals project, letting Bitcoin Users receive or transfer individual satoshis, which are BTC’s smallest denomination. The major upgrade Ordinals introduced to the Bitcoin blockchain was the ability to inscribe unique data, such as images and videos, rather than just maintaining transaction data.
As of this writing, the number of Ordinal inscriptions on Bitcoin is over eight million.
In March, Ordinals implemented the BRC-20 (Bitcoin Request for Comment) token standard to allow users to create fungible digital assets like meme coins.
The number of BRC-20 tokens created so far stands at 24,500, with a total market capitalization of $615 million.
Bitcoin processed over 681,000 daily transactions on May 2, marking its new all-time high. At the time, network fees spike significantly. Many Bitcoin Maxis blamed Ordinals for the high fees and advocated for the project to be blocked on the blockchain. On the other hand, Ordinals supporters argued that higher transaction fees help in securing the network.
Litecoin Ordinals
Following its success on Bitcoin, Ordinals expanded to the Litecoin blockchain in February. Launched in 2011, Litecoin is Bitcoin’s hard fork, and its native token, LTC, has been among the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap for years.
The Ordinals project was launched on Litecoin with the help of software developer Anthony Guerrera.
The LTC-20 token standard was implemented early this month, bringing more fungible tokens to the Litecoin blockchain. On May 10, daily transactions on Litecoin surged to 584,879, becoming the network’s new all-time high.
Litecoin Foundation claims the network now hosts more than 2.5 million Ordinal inscriptions.
Dogecoin Ordinals
The Ordinals project was launched on Dogecoin during the first week of May. Users of this network refer to the project as Doginals. The introduction of the DRC-20 token standard gave users the opportunity to inscribe tokens into Koinu, Dogecoin’s smallest denomination.
Of the three PoW blockchains, Dogecoin has seen the biggest surge in daily transactions. The network only processed about 87,000 transactions per day before Ordinals, but that figure jumped to an all-time high of 1.13 million on May 17.
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