Ordinals are a new method to bring Non-fungible tokens to the Bitcoin blockchain. The Bitcoin community is torn over the question if the NFTs are a useful addition or a waste of block space. In any case, Ordinals are growing larger reaching new highs, and are a driving factor in the fee market. 

How are NFTs entering the Litecoin blockchain and how could LTC benefit from them?

Ordinals are successful

Of course, Ordinals still lag behind NFT ecosystems of blockchains such as Ethereum in terms of growth and user base. According to Dune Analytics, over 150,000 NFTs have been minted so far on Bitcoin’s blockchain. In conclusion, the headstart of other ecosystems is more than noticeable, but the growth of Ordinals is still impressive. 

The Ordinals protocol uploads data other than transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. Instead of using smart contracts to create NFTs, the protocol inscribes a single Satoshi with attributes and stores the data directly on the blockchain.

This is possible through the Taproot upgrade and is arguably some sort of hack since this specific functionality was never intended. Controversy has sparked over the question if the data that is inscribed on the blockchain is spam and is blocking Bitcoin’s function as a monetary network. 

Ordinals on Litecoin

The reason why the Ordinals protocol was forked and ported to Litecoin is that its blockchain also supports SegWit and Taproot. Both are prerequisites for implementing the protocol on Litecoin. Should other cryptocurrencies choose a similar path it might become an option for them to implement Ordinals, too. That requires of course that their architecture is close to that of Bitcoin.

Litecoin is basically a fork from Bitcoin and therefore they have already so many things in common. Keep that in mind before getting too enthusiastic about possible Ordinal implementations on other chains in the future.

Ordinals was launched on Litecoin last Sunday by the developer Anthony Guerrera. The first inscription ever made is the MimbleWimble whitepaper. MimbleWimble is a privacy protocol that allows the protection of transaction data which is something that Bitcoin is still not offering yet. It remains to be seen if NFTs grow into something bigger than just a fork. Other blockchains have profited hugely from the trade of digital art and collectibles, while other ecosystems never gained traction. NFTs are not only requiring a technical solution but also a community that carries its success.