The rapid rise of Bitcoin Ordinals continues. With over 123,000 Ordinals listings now written forever on the Bitcoin blockchain, and a thriving trading and auction scene for the most sought after tokens and collections (read: low listing number), Bitcoin’s status as a NFT ecosystem has been secured. While the chain’s version of NFT has begun to proliferate in recent weeks, those looking to actually interact with the chain and obtain an Ordinal have had to deal with an opaque, slow, and centralized technological framework.
It was only a matter of time before Web3 developers began to fill the demand for a user-friendly interface that was sorely lacking. Let’s look at solutions that have recently arrived on the scene.
Ordinals Wallet
Ordinals Wallet, which launched on February 16, is the newest Bitcoin wallet to launch with explicit support for Ordinals Inscriptions. The wallet allows users to “receive, store, and view Ordinals” in their wallets while stating that functionality to transfer, send, enroll, and buy and sell Ordinals is on the way soon.
The Xverse wallet
Just 24 hours before Ordinals Wallet was launched, the Web3 Xverse Bitcoin Wallet officially launched the Bitcoin Ordinals service. “Over the last year, we have been focused on building the most advanced Bitcoin wallet,” the company’s announcement on Twitter read. “Today, we have launched first-class support for ordinals.”
The wallet eliminates the need for users to run a full Bitcoin node to meaningfully interact with the blockchain. Users simply pay a transaction fee (which they can do in the wallet app itself). You’ll also need to have some Bitcoin (BTC) to pay for that transaction, which can also be purchased in-app using a fiat access service.
To enroll an Ordinal, users must upload an image (or text) into the app and then send a transaction to their Ordinals address. The NFT will appear in about half an hour in your Xverse NFT collection. The actual registration is carried out by gamma.ioa Bitcoin NFT marketplace that has reportedly already minted five percent of all Ordinals on the Xverse chain it interacts with Stacks, a so-called layer 1.5 blockchain with its own NFT economy.
hiro wallet
Ultimately, Hiro Wallet preceded both Xverse and Ordinals Wallet with his Testnet launch on February 14. “The fun is only getting started as we roll out expansive support for Stacks and Ordinal-based NFT signups,” Hiro Wallet CEO Mark Hendrickson wrote during the wallet’s Bitcoin support launch this week.
The Hiro Wallet works similar to Xverse, with Gamma doing the sign-up and ordinals being deposited directly into a user’s account in the “Collectibles” section. The company plans to release additional updates in the coming days.
The rapid increase in user-friendly ways for Web3 enthusiasts to interact with the Bitcoin blockchain is indicative of the desire the NFT community has for the newly discovered NFT ecosystem. We are watching the development in real time of a whole new section of Web3. Expect more wallets, marketplaces, and user interfaces built explicitly with Bitcoin Ordinals to appear in the coming weeks and months.
