Unordinals — the first 1,000 PFP Ordinal Project
In the last few weeks, the NFT scene has received what it’s so desperately needed — a breath of fresh air and original ideas.
Since the waning days of January, if you’re on Crypto/NFT Twitter even sparingly, your timeline has most likely been seeing hints and discussions around Bitcoin NFTs (non-fungible tokens), also known as Ordinals. But what’s so different about Ordinals from other off-chain NFTs on Ethereum, Solana, or even Canto (lol)?
UPDATE: It’s been only 3 weeks since Unordinals launched — already BTC inscriptions are nearing 300k. To put that into perspective, Unordinals inscription is circled in red:
What Are Ordinals?
Ordinals are the Bitcoin equivalent of NFTs — I’m not going to spend a ton of time dissecting them other than to say that they were created by Casey Rodarmor and they consist of writing data to the Bitcoin blockchain by way of “inscribing” data onto individual Sats (or, satoshis). In doing so, that sat will contain the inscribed data in perpetuity, allowing it to be exchanged/traded/etc. as an NFT. I’m sure I’m oversimplifying things or potentially incorrect on some details, please do your own research — this isn’t an article on the technical aspects of ords or how to acquire an ordinal. (A good place to start is checking out the github for how to set up a Sparrow Wallet — Found HERE)
Why Inscription Matters
In the days and weeks that followed the launch of Ordinals, a mad dash was made to inscribe whatever could be written so as to secure a low inscription. This is because once an inscription is made, it’s given a unique number (chronologically starting from 0) and no other inscription may take its place. And, in true FOMO fashion, the lower the inscription, the more value.
Already only a few weeks removed from the inception of Ordinals, we’re seeing active trading take place on lower, sub-10K numbered Inscriptions. Twitter user Dotta has a great thread about the “important” collections that occupy sub-10k (thread found HERE) — important is the operative word because anybody can inscribe anything to BTC, and so unique and cohesive collections are often hard to find. Take a look at the most recent (as of 2/13/23 @ 3:00 PM PST) inscriptions:
And because anyone can inscribe, inscription numbers are already climbing into the tens of thousands (at the time of this article, inscriptions are already climbing into the high 7x,xxx numbers with roughly 8,000 inscriptions per day occurring, expected to grow exponentially).
Where Does the Unordinals Collection Fit?
Because of the open-source nature and randomness of it all, there are not many complete collections occupying the coveted space between 0 and 100,000 inscriptions, at least not for the non-whales like myself. There are numerous great collections available sub-100k, but most are low supply (10 to 100 total ords) and as such they have a high premium for entry — dingaling’s great Inscribed Pepes project holds ~100 pepes in coveted sub-10k placement, but the floor for entry starts at ~10 ETH/1 BTC.
Some projects have begun selling ETH NFTs with the hope/promise of inscribing at a later date (which means a higher, almost certainly 100,000+ Inscription number) — this means that while they may be successful, they won't be part of the first “100,000”.
Unordinals changes that though as being one of the first (if not the first) large-supply, cohesive collections all residing in sub-100k inscription blocks.
The mysterious dev of Unordinals, a Discord user by the name of Untoshi, wanted to make sure that his collection had cemented itself into the early history of BTC NFTs. As such, he began inscribing the BTC Unordinals during the ETH mint (Mint Date February, 10th, 2023) — this ensured that ALL Unordinal Inscriptions were secured ahead of time and by doing so, the Unordinal collection now rests comfortably between (Eth Token #1) Inscription 44713 (https://ordinals.com/inscription/93cf8a87f4e006c3fc19b0bd4b1ab189abe652744231bd8eb18008064a970d08i0) and (ETH Token #1000) 54824 (https://ordinals.com/inscription/647021c1d328133fdf54cc522e46d4cde7579c09e6eb1752e23bc32f4b4f0974i0) — to verify, all Inscriptions can be found (along with their accompanying ETH Token ID) here in this document Unordinals — Inscription List — Google Sheets — the links all linkout to Ordinals.com proofs of the Unordinals.
An Example of the ETH Unordinal and the Corresponding Ordinal
For example, if I take a random Unordinal from OpenSea (for this exmaple I’ll use Token #239 found HERE)
I can match Token 239 to the corresponding row 239
which leads me to Inscription 47302 on the Ordinals.com browser:
How can I get my Ordinal if I own an ETH Unordinal?
Right now, the Ordinal space is very new and there is really only one way to secure your Ordinal (Using Sparrow Wallet) — If you are comfortable with Ordinals and have set up your Sparrow Wallet appropriately (I will NOT cover that here as it is a rapidly changing space) you can use the dedicated Unordinals DAPP to burn your ETH NFT and have the corresponding Ordinal sent to your designated wallet.
At the time of this writing, 35 total ETH Ordinals have been truly burnt with their 35 respective Ordinals sitting nicely in their collectors BTC Wallets. Don’t trust me? Just ask Crypto Punk enjoyoor BillyRestey. Billy, outside of owning early NFT history through CryptoPunks, also founded Ordinal Shards (a highly successful Ordinal project that secured BTC Inscriptions in the 10,000 range! OpenSea found here)
Billy currently owns several Unordinals both on the Ethereum blockchain as well as a few Ordinals he obtained by burning:
What’s to Come?
Originally, the only promise that was made to the community for Unordinals was that if you minted or purchased an ETH Unordinal, you would be provided a means to burn said token for a BTC Ordinal — this was accomplished with the official DAPP rollout on February 12th, 2023. Since then, however, Untoshi has remained loyal to the pursuit of bringing more to the Unordinal community.
On February 13th, Untoshi hosted a cryptic Twitter Spaces (Found here, but not recorded) that was reminiscent of the days of We Are All Going to Die NFT fun of 2022. The Spaces was simply audio of what sounded like a battle being waged with swords and armor. After the short time, however, the Unordinals Twitter left us with more cryptic info:
What does it mean? I do not know but I’m looking forward to finding out.
Browse the complete collection on OrdinalsDirectory! Unordinals — Ordinals Directory or check out the OpenSea collection for the remaining Unordinals
