Bitcoin Ordinals has taken over Web3, at least, that’s what it seems like. The space has been buzzing with activity since software engineer Casey Rodarmor launched the protocol on January 21, with some excited about the new update and others swear to ordinals completely. Despite all the notoriety, less than 40,000 ordinals exist at the time of writing this article.
So why are ordinals so rare? The vast majority of people simply don’t know how to buy them, let alone how to create them. With higher barriers to entry, that means potential opportunities abound. But it also means higher risks. If you’re ready to take the risk and harness the potential of ordinals, we’re here to guide you on how to find, buy, and store them safely. First, it’s essential to understand some critical points about ordinals that the average NFT enthusiast might not be aware of.
What are Ordinals?
Each Bitcoin is divided into 100,000,000 units called satoshis (or sats). The new protocol ordinals It allows people who operate Bitcoin nodes to enroll each sat with data, creating something called an Ordinal. That data enrolled in Bitcoin can include smart contracts, which in turn enable NFTs. Generally speaking, ordinals are NFTs that you can mint directly on the Bitcoin blockchain.
but that’s not exactly good. That’s the shortened understanding, but there are some important differences between NFTs and ordinals.
How are ordinals different from NFTs?
NFT on Ethereum (or a Ethereum virtual machine blockchain) often point to off-chain data in the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), a decentralized file storage system, sort of like Blockchain’s hard drive, that can be changed using dynamic metadata. To illustrate, some NFT projects update individual NFT metadata to improve image quality. They could even ask their holders to click the “update metadata” button in OpenSea to get the new, higher quality image.
This ability to change the metadata of an NFT alludes to a deficiency that Rodarmor was trying to improve when it created the new protocol. By Rodarmor’s estimate, NFTs are “incomplete” because many require off-chain data. Ordinals, on the other hand, are “complete” in the sense that all data is written directly into the string. That’s why Rodarmor refers to them as digital artifacts, not NFTs. Additionally, NFTs often have creator royalties attached to them, while digital artifacts do not. According to Rodarmoran ordinal “is intended to reflect what NFTs should be, sometimes are, and always are inscriptions, by their very nature.”
All this to say that ordinals in Bitcoin may not only indicate a cultural change for Bitcoin, but may actually be a technical improvement in NFTs. With that as a backdrop, here’s how to buy, receive, and store your first ordinals.
Step 1 – Set up a sparrow wallet
You still can’t have Ordinals in a browser wallet like MetaMask. You must set up a Bitcoin wallet that allows enough customization to receive Ordinal signups. Sparrow fits that bill.
- To get started, go to Sparrow Purse.
- Click on the download link associated with your computer’s operating system.
Step 2 – Set up your wallet(s)
Sparrow wallet is a desktop application that requires a few steps to make it compatible with Ordinals.
- Once you have downloaded Sparrow, follow this detailed tutorial on Github to make a wallet compatible with Ordinal.
If you follow this guide, you should not send BTC to or from this Ordinals wallet. This wallet is for receiving ordinals only. If you send BTC from this new Ordinals wallet, you can accidentally send both your BTC and your Ordinal(s).
The three ways to go
Now that you’ve set up your wallet, you have three options for getting an Ordinal:
- Run a node and inscribe an ordinal yourself.
- Find an Ordinal owner and buy direct from him.
- Use a service to register an ordinal without running your own node.
We will not go into the technical details of running a Bitcoin node. If you already run your own node, we can reasonably infer that you can figure this out yourself. Let’s focus on the other two options, keeping in mind that this is all very new and risky. There are no major Ordinals markets yet, so a great deal of confidence and caution is required to proceed.
Step 3: Find Ordinals on Discord
The Ordinals marketplace is purely OTC, peer-to-peer at the moment.
- To find Ordinal projects, join the Ordinals Discord channel.
- Go to the link-your-project channel and see what projects are available.
- On that channel, the collection creators link their Discords where you can buy their Ordinals.
An important note: Buying Ordinals OTC will require you to break almost every rule you’ve ever heard of in order not to get scammed on Web3: you may have to connect with people on Discord, send money before receiving an Ordinal, transact directly with other people, etc. . We cannot stress enough how much caution is required here. Remember, only risk what you are willing to lose.
Step 4 – Use a service to sign up an ordinal for you
If you want to create your own ordinal but don’t want to run a Bitcoin node, several services have already appeared to register ordinals for you.
These services will ask you to provide the BTC address where you would like to receive your Ordinal. You will use your address from the new Ordinal wallet you created in Sparrow. They will also provide you with the amount of sats you owe for the transaction plus a service fee, as well as an address for you to send the BTC to. Transactions can range from less than $50 worth of BTC to several hundred dollars, depending on the size of your file.
If you send the BTC, and this highly trusted transaction goes according to plan, you will not receive your Ordinal in your wallet in seconds or minutes. It could take hours or days.
Tedious, risky and full of potential
As you can see, if you want to be in the Ordinals market early, like “get out of bed before the rooster crows”, you’ll have to piece together a web of tedious tasks to make it happen. But that opportunity could be worth it. Just be careful and learn what you can before venturing forward. Ready to dive deeper? We recommend going directly to the source: Rodarmor’s ordinal theory handbook.
