Ordinals Marketplaces
Gamma.io
When Ordinals took over the ecosystem, Gamma launched its no-code Ordinals Launchpad for making NFTs on native Bitcoin, using Ordinals. Gamma's platform makes creating Ordinals simple and accessible to anyone with a Bitcoin address. After launching the platform and individual and bulk inscriptions, Gamma quickly released Ordinals Collection Mints for a seamless experience: just like launching a Stacks NFT collection. Gamma.io is also the leading NFT marketplace on Stacks, with over 95% marketshare.
The Ordinals marketplace allows users to explore, sell, trade and buy Ordinals, directly on the Bitcoin blockchain, with a Bitcoin L1 infrastructure. This means Gamma's Ordinal marketplace won't leverage other chains such as ETH or Stacks for Ordinal trading. The Gamma.io Ordinals marketplace was released in March 2023, making all inscriptions tradable right away. Leather wallet and Xverse wallet, which are initially Stacks and Bitcoin wallets compatible with Gamma.io, also quickly developed to become Ordinals wallets.
Other popular players
A few other notable names include Ordinals Market, based on the Ethereum infrastructure, Ordswap, built on Bitcoin, and Ordinals Wallet.
In the case of an Ethereum based Ordinals marketplace that uses vaults, users are issued an ETH representation of their ordinal, which then enables them to go to other marketplaces such as OpenSea and trade that proof of ownership token. Owners of the ETH NFT (the representation of the Ordinal) can unlock the vault with that NFT, and withdraw the original vaulted asset to an Ordinal wallet of their choosing.
More about the Ordinal trend
In January 2023, the crypto ecosystem was taken by storm by a new development: Bitcoin Ordinals. What are they? Ordinals are numbers assigned to a list of inputs. But in the Bitcoin world, Ordinals are essentially Bitcoin NFTs (non-fungible tokens) directly on the Bitcoin blockchain. The terms Bitcoin NFTs, Ordinals, Ordinal inscriptions, Ordinal NFTs and Bitcoin Ordinals are used interchangeably to designate these on-chain digital assets.
Casey Rodarmor, former Bitcoin Core contributor, found a loophole in the Taproot upgrade and designed the Ordinals Protocol, allowing anyone who runs a Bitcoin node to inscribe arbitrary data (such as text, jpegs and more) directly onto a satoshi, the smallest unit of Bitcoin.
Unlike Ethereum NFTs and many others (on other blockchains such as Solana, Stacks and Polygon), Ordinal NFTs are completely immutable. They do not depend on smart contracts and their data is stored directly on-chain within Bitcoin blocks, so once the bitcoin transaction is confirmed, they can never be edited. It is safe to say that Ordinals use cases will continue to evolve as users and developers explore their potential, from digital art to the metaverse.
Bitcoin (BTC) is the first and largest cryptocurrency by market cap, but it has limited smart contract functionality. Ethereum (ETH) and other blockchains aim to improve upon Bitcoin's limitations and help in the creation of dApps, DeFi and more. Ordinal NFTs offer many benefits so far, including high security, true immutability, the growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem and increased adoption, and lower fees. Because buying and selling on BTC blockchain is simpler than other chains, transaction fees for on-chain storage services are cheaper.
When the Ordinals trend took over the crypto market, collections such as the Ordinal Punks and The Taproot Wizards started inscribing their NFT collections onto the Bitcoin network. By the end of February, Yuga Labs, the world's largest issuer of NFTs, announced TwelveFold, a new NFT collection issued on Bitcoin. Because on-chain Bitcoin NFTs are new, the fundamental building blocks for a deep and liquid market must be built. It was only a matter of time before new startups emerged and took over the Ordinals marketplace scene.