Frank and Kevin, the founders of DeGods, interviewed Decrypt about why 535 burned Solana NFTs were inscribed on Bitcoin.
As news spread that all profile pictures (PFPs) had been inscribed on Bitcoin in a single block, DeGods announced the move on Monday. “Inscribing” creates NFT-like assets on the Bitcoin blockchain, similar to “minting” on Ethereum. The 535 images released by Solana in 2021 were “burned” to reduce supply in the project’s initial phases.
Aesthetics matter a lot to my team @DeGodsNFT.
— Frank III (@frankdegods) February 14, 2023
It was an honor working with @hash_bender to make sure there was no random trashy Ordinals minted in between all 535 DeGods.
All in one block. Simple. Beautiful.
Inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain forever. pic.twitter.com/Yfuvc8IDuT
“Bitcoin is the best brand in crypto—just as pristine as it gets,” Frank told Decrypt. “It’s the most well known, and truly as simple but powerful as it can get. And the mission statement is it’s never been corrupted, right? It’s like global sound money. That is so powerful. Aligning ourselves with the best brand in crypto is a no-brainer at any given point in time.”
Now, those 535 PFPs have a second chance at life on Bitcoin, with artwork that has never been seen before. Last year, DeGods gave holders of “DeadGods” new art and upgraded artwork for the burned NFTs.
Extra opportunity for Ordinals
Ordinals connect NFT-like media and assets to the Bitcoin blockchain using a single Satoshi, or 1/100,000,000th of a BTC. The media and Ordinal are stored on-chain, but extra infrastructure and platforms are needed to transact and manage assets.
It has quickly given rise to CryptoPunks clones and playable web games on Bitcoin. But Ordinals has also gotten a lot of backlash from Bitcoin maximalists, and it has increased network congestion and transaction fees at the same time.
Kevin said that they started working on Ordinals as soon as it got going. But with the DeGods inscriptions, they didn’t want to just mint them in the usual way and have the inscriptions added to the network across
Instead, they worked with a Bitcoin miner; Nick Hansen, CEO of Luxor Technologies, to get all 535 NFT inscriptions added to the blockchain in a single, exclusive block. The block was processed by the Terra Pool of DMG Blockchain Solutions, which claims to be a carbon-neutral mining pool powered by renewable energy solutions.
Over 1 year ago, 535 DeGods were burned.
— Frank III (@frankdegods) February 13, 2023
Many have speculated on their return.
What is dead may never die. pic.twitter.com/fmP1FhZI6F
“It was a deal-breaker for us if we couldn’t do it as a custom block, because we had to do something special,” Frank told Decrypt. “It’s the DeGods way, right? You can’t just do it in the basic way. You’ve gotta do something that feels really fresh.”
Compressing the 535 images into a Bitcoin block was necessary. To conserve space, each was resized to 210×210 pixels in .webp format. They’re now in the Bitcoin blockchain for future usage.
Ordinals store their artwork or assets in the on-chain block, unlike many Ethereum and other NFTs that store them on servers or IPFS. DeGods liked that these assets may exist forever on Bitcoin.
“I’ve run a [Bitcoin] node, and the idea that every single node on the planet is now verifying and backing up this image is so powerful,” Frank said. “That is what got us really excited.”
What comes next?
As stated in December, the bigger DeGods project will be bridged from Solana to Ethereum by the end of this quarter, with sister project y00ts bridging from Solana to Polygon.
This is still happening for the rest of the project’s 10,000 NFTs, and Frank tweeted this week that “having a presence on all blockchains is important.” But these 535 DeGods NFTs, which were burned on Solana before, will only live on Bitcoin through Ordinals.
It's just the beginning. pic.twitter.com/F3vxzXQAOy
— Frank III (@frankdegods) December 25, 2022
Monday, the official DeGods Twitter account said that information about how to mint Bitcoin NFTs will be released “in the coming days.”
Kevin told Decrypt on Tuesday, but anyway, that they are currently being kept in private wallets and that they are waiting for more tools to be put in place to make it safer to handle and trade Ordinals. Kevin said that once that goal is reached, they have lots of ideas for how to launch the NFTs to “come back to our holders and support the community.”
“We’re gonna essentially sit on them,” Kevin said, “until we are comfortable that the tooling will support the proper custody of these for a reasonably sophisticated crypto connoisseur.”
Content Source: decrypt.com
Cover Image Source: decrypt.co
