Numbering and lettering Bitcoin, this "ancient" blockchain network is stuck in congestion moments

Interface News Reporter | Si Linwei

Compared to Ethereum, Bitcoin, with its vision of "digital gold", has been relatively calm in terms of blockchain technology updates in recent years. However, the Bitcoin community has recently ushered in the hottest moment of technology discussion in recent years.

According to News. bitcoin, the cost of Bitcoin online transactions has skyrocketed in the past week, with an average transfer fee of $19.20 per transaction. According to data from Bitinfocharts.com, the median transaction cost for Bitcoin networks is 0.0004BTC, which is approximately $11.05 per transfer. High priority transactions require a payment of over $22.90 per transaction, while medium priority transactions require a payment of $19.95.

The congested network has even hindered the normal operation of Bitcoin transactions. Earlier this week, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Coin An, suspended withdrawals of Bitcoin twice, citing blockchain congestion due to excessive pending transactions.

Due to too many pending transactions, we have temporarily closed Bitcoin withdrawals, "Coin An tweeted on Sunday evening. Our team is working hard to repair and will reopen Bitcoin withdrawals as soon as possible. Please rest assured that the funds are safe and sound. "On Sunday morning, Coin An temporarily suspended Bitcoin withdrawals for about 90 minutes. According to CoinDesk, there were nearly 400000 pending Bitcoin transactions at that time.

The biggest cause of Bitcoin network congestion is the birth of the concepts of Ordinals and Inscriptions. At the end of last year, Casey Rodarmor, a core contributor to Bitcoin, created the Ordinals protocol, introducing the concepts of Ordinals and Inscriptions, giving birth to the first NFT of Bitcoin network.

Under the setting of Nakamoto, the total number of Bitcoins is 21 million, with the smallest and indivisible unit being Sat (Sat). The conversion formula is that one Bitcoin equals 100 million Sat. Casey Rodarmor, one of the core contributors of Bitcoin, proposed the theory of ordinals based on this. Ordinals are numbered starting from 0 in the order in which congs are mined. For example, the first cong in the first block has a sequence number of 0, the second cong has a sequence number of 1, and so on, thus giving each cong an ID attribute. Simply understood, the smallest unit of Bitcoin is numbered, Similar to each banknote having its own unique code.

After each cong has irreplaceability, it is connected to other information such as images, text, videos, and code, thus making each cong indivisible, non homogeneous, and traceable, which is the characteristic of NFT (Non Homogeneous Token). This is equivalent to giving Bitcoin the ability to create NFTs.

In combination with the two upgrades of the Bitcoin network, Segwit (2017) and Taproot (2021), Ordinals has realized the function of recording arbitrary data (images, videos, text, etc.) on the Bitcoin blockchain, making it possible to create digital art or NFT. So, Bitcoin NFTs were officially born and attracted community attention, including YugaLabs, the world's largest NFT studio, who chose to issue NFTs on the Bitcoin network.

Since it is possible to issue a Bitcoin version of NFT through Ordinals, some people speculate on whether other Bitcoin versions of tokens, similar to the ERC-20 token in the Ethereum network, can be issued.

Twitter user @ domodata created a BRC20 token based on the Ordinal protocol on March 8, 2023. Similar to the ERC20 standard of Ethereum, it specifies the name, quantity, and transfer functions of tokens issued on Ethereum, and all token contracts developed based on Ethereum comply with this standard.

The main difference between BRC20 and ERC20 is that the Bitcoin network does not support smart contracts. It deploys token contracts, mints, and transfers tokens by using the Ordinal protocol to set inscriptions to JSON data format, allowing developers to create and issue homogeneous tokens through the Ordinal protocol. The first BRC-20 token on the Bitcoin network, the Ordi, was released through the BRC-20 standard, with a total of 21 million tokens available for free on a first come, first served basis.

As of the time of publication, the price of the Ordi token had exceeded $7, with a market value exceeding $150 million, making it a hot topic of community attention recently. With the popularity of the Ordinal protocol, the development of the Bitcoin network ecosystem has once again become a topic of discussion for some people. They want to replicate the prosperity of Ethereum in the Bitcoin network and develop the potential of Bitcoin in addition to "value storage". However, some people believe that the Ethereum ecosystem is already well-established, and replicating it again in the Bitcoin network is unnecessary.

Although the Bitcoin network is experiencing congestion, the price of Bitcoin has not fluctuated significantly, maintaining around $27000 as of the time of publication.