Magic Eden launches marketplace for Bitcoin Ordinals

It’s one of the first major NFT marketplaces to join the Bitcoin Ordinals fray, which as of March 21 boasted 567,087 inscriptions.

Nonfungible token marketplace Magic Eden has launched its own “fully audited” marketplace for Bitcoin Ordinals, leveraging the surging interest in “Bitcoin NFTs.” 

The newly launched marketplace allows Bitcoin NFT traders to buy and sell Bitcoin Ordinal collections, giving users a similar experience to the one that Magic Eden offers for Polygon, Ethereum and Solana-based NFTs.

Extremely excited to announce that @MagicEden is now on Bitcoin. With this, we are simplifying the journey for collectors and creators to get started on Bitcoin - the granddaddy of all chains. Kudos to @kevcode_art @zhouzhuojie @ChartFuMonkey who championed this effort. https://t.co/0W7i0uBvPT

— Zhuoxun Yin (@ZhuoxunYin) March 21, 2023

“Just as we have expanded into other chains, we now aim to bring our expertise in building marketplaces to the nascent, yet flourishing Ordinals ecosystem,” the firm said in a March 21 statement. 

The new Ordinals protocol was introduced in January by former Bitcoin core contributor Casey Rodarmor. Since then, the popularity of Bitcoin Ordinals has surged.

According to data from Dune analytics, between Feb. 1 and March 1, the total number of Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions surged from 679 to 240,000. As of March 21, a total of 567,087 have been inscribed.

Graph showing the daily and total Bitcoin Ordinals inscriptions. Source: Dune Analytics

“We paid close attention to the release of Ordinal Theory and the lightning pace of adoption that soon followed,” said Magic Eden, adding:

“Our marketplace was built within a month, culminating in a hackathon in California with over a dozen devs.”

Currently, the marketplace only supports secondary sales of Bitcoin Ordinals. The marketplace said it is also looking into future tools that would allow creators to more easily mint or inscribe Bitcoin NFTs, such as its launchpad, which it offers for other chains.

In order to enable permissionless swaps, it uses partially signed Bitcoin transactions — a Bitcoin standard that allows multiple parties to sign the same transaction — rather than smart contracts.

The marketplace launched with over 70 collections. Source: Magic Eden

Meanwhile, Magic Eden says while there will be no royalty support for the marketplace, it is “actively looking” into this, adding there is “very little tooling and no secure and trustless enforcement solutions.” 

“With no royalty standard today, we have decided to launch on Bitcoin without royalty support for now,” said Magic Eden.

“We believe that this is most in-line with the ethos of the ecosystem, and despite this, we are actively looking into the development of an on-chain, permissionless royalty standard and are committed to working with creators and the greater community,” it added.

Other Bitcoin Ordinals marketplaces have already launched, including ORDX and Generative XYZ, which launched in February. Earlier this week, NFT platform Gamma.io unveiled its own Bitcoin Ordinals marketplace, allowing users to create and trade ordinal inscriptions in a manner similar to Ethereum NFT marketplaces.

Cointelegraph contacted Magic Eden for comment but did not immediately receive a response.