Bitcoin Ordinals Cause Fees to Rise
Bitcoin’s native Ordinals (BTC) protocol is taking up unprecedented space on the blockchain and, in the process, driving up transaction fees on the network.
The recently launched divisive protocol allows non-fungible tokenized (NFT) assets on the Bitcoin mainnet by enrolling satoshis with content.
So far, the submissions have included content such as images, documents including a PDF of the Bitcoin whitepaper, and even a fully playable file. clone from the video game DOOM.
On February 2, indie developer Udi Wertheimer tweeted that he had made the “largest transaction in Bitcoin history” after using the Ordinals protocol to inscribe a 3.94-megabyte image of a bearded, bald, and black magician. sunglasses praising “the magical JPEGs of the Internet.” .”
last night we made history
The doormen tried to censor us
But we mined the BIGGEST BLOCK and BIGGEST TRANSACTION IN THE HISTORY OF BITCOIN
A special thanks to the bitcoin full node operators for supporting our efforts and hosting our 4MB NFT for all eternity!
gm @TaprootWizards ♂️ pic.twitter.com/uKGG918af8
— Udi Wertheimer (@udiWertheimer) February 2, 2023
The data size of these enrolled transactions is much larger than those typically carried out on the blockchain, and as a result, the fees associated with their processing have increased.
Typical Bitcoin transactions can cost anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars, but ordinal ones can cost tens of dollars by comparison.
Figures from crypto mining data provider Hashrate Index show Over the last seven days, fees as a percentage of the block reward are on the rise, starting the week at around 1% before jumping to a weekly high of 6.74% on February 1.
Mastercard NFT Leader Resigns On Bad Terms, Sells Resignation Letter As NFT
The now former leader of NFT products at payment giant Mastercard left the company in spectacular fashion, publicly criticizing the company for allegedly mistreating him and offering his letter of resignation as an NFT.
In a February 2 Twitter thread, Satvik Sethi claimed that Mastercard cut his salary by 40% when he moved from New York City to London, stating that he “had to work side jobs last year to make ends meet.” of month”.
I have given up @MasterCard.
For the past year, I have served as ‘NFT Product Lead’. I evangelized Web3 to Mastercard leadership and regional teams, as well as to all of our Fortune 500 customers and partners.
This wasn’t easy, but read on to find out why it was necessary and what’s next: pic.twitter.com/kqiavsSIW7
—Satvik Sethi (@sxtvik) February 2, 2023
He stated that sometimes he did not receive his salary “until he asked the entire hierarchy for it.”
Sethi also alleged that he was the victim of harassment “caused by a series of mismanaged processes, miscommunication (and) internal inefficiency.”
He asked his more than 22,000 Twitter followers for their support in minting his resignation letter for 0.023 Ether (ETH), worth around $37.
“100% of this is going towards survival,” Sethi added, as he will lose his British work visa and “will be based in India for the foreseeable future”. Sethi also promised a future art airdrop for NFT holders.
At the time of writing 53 NFT of the letterwhich Sethi titled “New Beginnings”, had been coined.
Cointelegraph reached out to Mastercard for comment on Sethi’s allegations, but did not immediately receive a response.
eBay seeks talent for its acquired NFT marketplace
E-commerce player eBay is looking to hire various Web3-related roles for its UK-based NFT marketplace, KnownOrigin, which it acquired in June 2022.
eBay job postings on LinkedIn revealed their hiring for positions in the UK and at their California headquarters.
Roles include a Manchester-based Community Manager for KnownOrigin along with a Content Designer and Marketing Campaign Executive for the marketplace, among other roles.
The firm is also hiring for two positions in California for a Crypto Counsel. The job description says the role will see a “creative crypto lawyer” join eBay’s legal team to support its “business, product, compliance and technology teams in the Web3 space.”
OpenSea launches a suite of tools for NFT creators
The OpenSea NFT marketplace released the next set of tools for its “Drops” feature which is used to help creators launch NFT collections with OpenSea to benefit from its reach.
In a February 2 Twitter thread, OpenSea said it had worked closely with 20 teams to “build a best-in-class drop experience.”
We’re excited to start rolling out the next phase of Drops to OpenSea, a product we’ve been working on for the past few months! https://t.co/rRydH289Vq ⬇️
—OpenSea (@opensea) February 2, 2023
The next phase of the release includes providing creators with tools to enable multi-stage minting, smart contract deployment across multiple Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains, and custom web landing pages, among other features.
The tool will “phase-in” to select creators “in the coming weeks,” according to OpenSea.
It will also add more features in the coming weeks before it is released to the general public.
OpenSea has experimented with its Drops feature by creating custom pages for select collections, notably one was created for the debut collection by actor Sir Anthony Hopkins, which ended up selling out in less than 10 minutes.
Other nifty news:
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said that there are “various possibilities for using Web3” in the country, and that the government can use NFTs and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to promote its “Cool Japan” strategy to show the technology and technology of the nation. culture.
Cointelegraph spoke to industry professionals on how to prevent NFT thefts, who advised users to exercise due diligence, revoke unnecessary permissions, and segregate NFTs into different wallets, among other measures.
