Ordinals is a protocol that allows you to attach content in the form of text, images, videos and so on to certain satoshis or 0.00000001 BTC. The trick of this method is just using satsos that can’t be split. As a result, the smallest indivisible bit of BTC is essentially permanently assigned to an image or something else.

NFTs on the Bitcoin network were launched in January 2023. Since then, the total number of “tokens” created has surpassed the 3.87 million unit mark.

Total number of NFTs based on the Ordinals protocol on the Bitcoin network

The record number of NFTs created in a 24-hour period was set this week on Monday. At that time, cryptocurrency enthusiasts created 372 thousand Ordinals-based NFTs.

The scale of new Ordinals-based NFTs created on the Bitcoin network in a 24-hour period

However, the day before the protocol encountered problems due to the actions of a certain developer. Although they do not threaten the functionality of the protocol, the situation turned out to be unusual in any case.

What happened to NFT in Bitcoin?

In general, the Ordinals protocol is a numbering system that assigns each satoshi a serial number, which is tracked during transactions. In other words, the project allows individual satoshis to be made unique, and thus creates a feature set to run Bitcoin-based NFT without any third-party networks. The unique numbering of the satoshis allows you to attach data to each one, be it an image, text or something else.

The Satoshis are not numbered randomly, but in a specific order of creation. Accordingly, the first NFT is followed by the second, and so on. And it is just the developer under the nickname Supertestnet that has made a mess of this order because of his actions.

The dynamics of average commission per transaction in BTC over a year

Ordinals are used to commit a wide range of data to the blockchain, from simple pixel art to video games. The fact that Ordinals requires only the Bitcoin blockchain and nothing else can be seen as a disadvantage. Still, due to the increased activity in Ordinals, the blockchain workload is growing, which leads to an increase in the average fee per BTC transaction.

As we noted the day before, the average fee level on the Bitcoin network reached a two-year high. This means that user activity is really overloading the blockchain’s capabilities, causing users to pay more to get their transactions onto the blockchain quickly.

Fees on the Bitcoin network are now at a two-year high

But Ordinals has a silver lining, as the project has "breathed life" into the community of both the usual cryptocurrency fans and the camp of Bitcoin-only fans. All of them got something new directly from the BTC network, which has only been used to transfer value throughout the cryptocurrency's existence. In other words, global innovation in the BTC ecosystem happens very rarely.

Problems with the Ordinals protocol?

First, let’s look at the specifics of Bitcoin transaction transfers. In theory, any cryptocurrency user can send a transaction of 0 BTC – that is, without a single satoshi – but they will still pay a commission to the miners from that transfer. In practice, such transactions are considered “non-standard” – they are automatically rejected by most nodes in the Bitcoin network.

However, this limitation can be circumvented by asking the miners to process the “zero” transaction directly. On its page on the GitHub platform Supertestnet writes that mining pools have their own Telegram chats, where some miners are willing to help with such a transfer. And here we come to its main feature – the lack of inputs and outputs.

“Zero” transaction

When a user sends a regular BTC transaction, its inputs and outputs are created. The first is the coins available in the wallet from previous incoming payments, which are sent in the transaction. When a transfer is sent, an outgoing payment of the desired amount is created, which is called an output. The outputs of one transaction are then used by the receiving wallet as inputs of new transactions – and so on.

According to Decrypt’s sources, Supertestnet, by creating a “null” transaction, did not create its inputs and outputs, causing a failure in the numbering of Satoshi Ordinals. What’s more, he even created a section on GitHub dedicated to the problem. Which means, in theory, anyone could conduct such a peculiar attack on the protocol.

Supertestnet modestly called itself the “Jipeg Destroyer”, i.e. the picture in the blockchain

The problem, however, is not as important as many people think – a cryptocurrency enthusiast named Danny Dickroeger tweeted about it. According to him, the satoshi numbers themselves no longer have any value in themselves, as Supertestnet has managed to “break the logic” of the protocol. In any case, if the community abandons the concept altogether, nothing bad will allegedly happen, as the NFTs created in the Bitcoin network will continue to successfully exist and operate.


We believe that this situation reflects not only the creativity of the developer, but also the general state of the cryptocurrency industry. Although the latter has been around since 2009, new areas of vulnerability are still emerging. And that speaks volumes about the right direction for developers, who are not sitting still and continue to look for new uses for digital assets and blockchain.

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