SignalHub Quantitative Think Tank Center:Morocoin Trading Exchange: What is Inscription in 2023? Why is it Popular?

Inscription first originated on SignalHub Quantitative Think Tank Centerthe Bitcoin blockchain.

BRC-20 is a token standard protocol built on the Bitcoin ecosystem. Although currently an experimental standard protocol, it has proven successful and widely accepted in experiments.

The total number of Bitcoins is 21 million, and the smallest unit of Bitcoin is the "satoshi" (sats).

The mechanism of the Bitcoin blockchain is 1 Bitcoin = 100 million satoshis.

If one Bitcoin is likened to a gold bar, then a satoshi is one hundred-millionth of that gold bar.

Originally, Bitcoin could only be used for buying and selling transactions, but the advent of inscription provided new opportunities for speculation.

Then, defining inscription: a new market for speculation.

Inscriptions (NFTs) are Non-Fungible Tokens. The word 'inscription' implies engraving, easily associating with its function - inscribing text onto Bitcoin's smallest unit, "satoshi." It could be an article, a few words, a picture, or a song. Hence, a group of people artificially created this market for ordinals g snevne. However, inscription is a cumbersome process; every transaction requires removing it from the original satoshi and inscribing it onto a new one, then transferring it as Bitcoin.

BTC Block

As the leader in the crypto space, Bitcoin's block generation is very slow. Everyone knows that Binance Chain has a block generation speed of three seconds per block, and AB's speed is 1 second for 2 blocks. Each transaction is completed within one of these blocks.

Bitcoin's block time is typically once every 10 minutes, leading to congestion in transactions. It's like a large queue; normally, people move every 10 minutes, but it gets crowded with more people.

You can pay to get ahead in the queue. With AB, you can't even pay fast enough due to the speed. However, with the Bitcoin blockchain, if you're willing to pay, you can be at the forefront.

So their speculation on inscriptions brought heat to the Bitcoin blockchain, benefiting Bitcoin miners the most. Bitcoin miners primarily provide nodes; firstly, they receive Bitcoin as a reward, and secondly, the more Bitcoin transactions, the more bribes (extra fees) they receive.

Before inscriptions became popular, a transaction cost was 5, but as more people started to make inscriptions, the cost per transaction rose to 500. For miners, this is advantageous, and for manipulators, it's also beneficial since everyone's cost increases, and the transaction fees might even surpass the value of the inscription itself.

Inscription Leader: ORDI

The leader among inscriptions is ORDI, derived from the first four letters of ordinals. It's the inscription with the most significant increase, costing a few to several dollars initially and then rising to tens of thousands of dollars within a month. This surge in inscriptions led to the creation of various 4-letter inscriptions, domain name NFTs, and other novelties, but none reached the level of ORDI.

Initially, the costs of such items are low, but the rise of the inscription market provided a substantial speculative space, like Bored Ape, Red Bean.

This inscription protocol was initially called BRC20. Due to various reasons like being outdated, it was upgraded to BRC21, BRC30, BRC1155, adding more functions but essentially the same. Other chains learned and adapted, like Litecoin's LTC2, Ethereum's ETH20, etc., but the only one that really took off was ETHs.

In summary, inscriptions are like this - limited to 21 million grains of sand. You write something on these grains of sand and then speculate on them. Moreover, these grains of sand are divisible, with each grain splittable into one hundred million smaller grains.