The team behind Bitcoin Ordinals has taken a new step to ensure that its NFT ecosystem keeps undergoing development at a consistent pace. To do so, a new non-profit organisation, named the Open Ordinals Institute, has been launched to gather funding for the Ordinal NFTs. The development comes after inscriptions on Bitcoin Ordinals recently hit the mark of 21 million testifying to the rise in interest among the NFT community.
“The Open Ordinals Institute is a public charity dedicated to nurturing and upholding a thriving ecosystem for the free and open-source development of the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol. It is committed to supporting developers involved in this protocol, as well as those creating user-friendly tools that facilitate less technically proficient users to create Bitcoin Digital Artifacts,” said the official website of Open Ordinals.
The Open Ordinals Institute will be based in California, US. A total of four Ordinals-friendly members have been appointed by the developer team. These members include Raph, the project’s pseudonymous lead maintainer along with Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor. The other two team members are Bitcoin-focused podcast host Erin Redwing and an anonymous Ordinals developer known as Ordinally, a CoinTelegraph report said.
The team will primarily work on getting funds for the Bitcoin Ordinals team, Raph posted in a tweet on Wednesday, August 2.
I’m excited to bring some formal structure to funding. Hopefully we can get some more long term and high quality contributions to the ecosystem through this! https://t.co/2DOXV1RjRl
— raph (@raphjaph) August 1, 2023
When an NFT is inscribed on one Satoshi unit of the Bitcoin blockchain, it gets classified as an Ordinal NFT. Satoshi, named after Bitcoin’s anonymous creator, is the smallest denomination of Bitcoin.
Rodarmor first launched the Ordinals protocol in January this year. The category of digital collectibles exploded in popularity after BAYC parent Yuga Labs announced its own Ordinals NFT collection called TwelveFold in March this year.
In May, the number of Ordinal inscriptions exceeded the mark of seven million and managed to reportedly garner around $173.28 million (roughly Rs. 1,433 crore) in revenue within a thirty-day period.
Given the evident explosion in the Ordinals NFT market, its developers are now looking to explore newer avenues for growth, and that led it to launch a dedicated team to bring in the funding. The development has stirred excitement among the NFT community members, some of whom are already vouching to donate funds to the Open Ordinals Institute.
Builders Back Builders :saluting_face:
Excited to support Ordinals lead maintainer @raphjaph and the core team’s Open Ordinals Institute. I will donate 2 BTC for Ordinals protocol development over the next 6 months starting with .33 BTC to get the ball rolling. Support the protocol team if… https://t.co/a4LtLE47tN
— zk-:shark: (@ZK_shark) August 1, 2023
Builders Back Builders :saluting_face:
Excited to support Ordinals lead maintainer @raphjaph and the core team’s Open Ordinals Institute. I will donate 2 BTC for Ordinals protocol development over the next 6 months starting with .33 BTC to get the ball rolling. Support the protocol team if… https://t.co/a4LtLE47tN
— zk-:shark: (@ZK_shark) August 1, 2023
“In addition to developers, we aim to fund designers, reviewers, researchers, educators, and others who contribute to the enhancement and promotion of this novel technology,” the Open Ordinals website added.