There are currently more than 100,000 pieces of data written directly on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Just five days after reaching 50,000 inscriptions, Bitcoiners using the Ordinals protocol have now written more than 100,000 pieces of data to the Bitcoin blockchain. Since the launch of the project in January 2023, a seemingly endless stream of images, audio files and PDFs have been uploaded.
As previously explained, inscriptions, through the Ordinal protocol, allow users to insert data, usually images, directly into the Bitcoin blockchain, effectively enabling NFT in Bitcoin. A full write-up on the technical intricacies of the protocol can be found here. Additionally, Matt Odell has recorded an episode of Citadel Dispatch with the protocol creator, Casey Rodarmorwhich can be heard here.
Important projects in Ordinals include Bitcoin Shrooms, Astral Babes and Bitcoin Punks, who uploaded the Bitcoin base of the original Ethereum CryptoPunks. One of them has now sold for 9.5 BTC, or about $215,000 at the time of writing.
You can explore all the different inscriptions through the inscription explorer. The platform has been rapidly adopted by a wide range of users, from artists to businesses. It has seen an explosion in use in the past few weeks, likely as a result of the growing popularity of NFTs and the promise of NFTs built directly on the Bitcoin platform, inheriting all the qualities that make Bitcoin the leading Layer 1 blockchain.