Earlier this year, Ordinals — a unique inscription on the smallest unit of a Bitcoin, called a Satoshi — emerged as a controversial new development. Dismissed by some as spam and embraced by others as a way to bring BRC-20 tokens and NFTs to Bitcoin, the technology stimulated a flurry of developments.
Now there is excitement around “recursive inscriptions,” which is a very confusing yet potentially much more powerful development. Recursive Inscriptions essentially promise to allow more complex functionality to be built on Bitcoin’s blockchain, akin to smart contracts on Ethereum.
Some believe recursive inscriptions could see Ordinals develop from NFTs and “digital artifacts” to underpin a full-blown DeFi ecosystem on Bitcoin very soon. Others are confident it will enable Bitcoin to take on decentralized storage provider IFPS. One person Magazine spoke to believes it will eventually lead to an interconnected supercomputer being built on-chain.
Danny Yang, a Stanford PhD, creator of OCM Dimensions and Bitcoiner since 2013, says recursive inscriptions unlock the next evolution of Bitcoin:
“People won’t believe it when it’s presented to them now. It’s not going to operate exactly like Uniswap, but other high-value digital assets will emerge on Bitcoin. That’s what Ordinals and recursive inscriptions will evolve into. They will become a new form of programmable assets and code.”
These tech developments — while at a very early and speculative stage — are making Bitcoin interesting again. A Bitcoin maxi friend complained to me that I never write about Bitcoin. In truth, there’s been very little new to write about until recently.
“That’s pretty true,” Yang agrees.
85% of on-chain bitcoin transactions in the past 24 hours are ordinals related
EIGHTY FIVE PERCENT
the main usecase of the bitcoin chain is ORDINALS pic.twitter.com/PCZt4if5jf
— Udi Wertheimer (@udiWertheimer) August 20, 2023Recursive support switched on in June
Yang has worked on recursive inscriptions since February in the form of Bitcoin generative NFT collections OCM Dimensions and OCM Genesis. He inscribed both of those innovative collections on Bitcoin in February (along with compression and 3D programming libraries) before anyone understood the significance of what he had done.
Yet OCM Dimensions was only publicly launched on June 15, the day that recursive inscription support was turned on for Ordinals.com. Yang explains to Magazine:
“You have to show something before people start listening, and finally, after months of beating the drums about the significance of recursive inscriptions on Bitcoin, people are starting to get it after we showed what was possible with OCM Dimensions — the first 3D, high resolution, animated and interactive work on Bitcoin.”
For now, the smart contract-enabled Ethereum blockchain is the home of more developer activity than anywhere else, and it dominates the DeFi sector. Until this year, the idea of building a genuine smart contract — the self-executing code used as building blocks for programmable money ecosystems — was not possible on Bitcoin.
But some now say Ordinals and recursive inscriptions could see a DeFi ecosystem emerge on Bitcoin fairly soon. It’s not going to be easy, though.
Bitcoin Ordinals is a big deal. I’ve been building on Bitcoin for over ten years, and Ordinals is the most significant development in recent years. Don’t get distracted by the monkey JPEGs talk, and do learn why the Ordinals Protocol is important.
