Benzinga - Tom Lehman, the co-founder of music website Genius.com, has launched a new protocol, “Ethscriptions,” allowing Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) users to create non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and other digital assets on the blockchain.
What Happened: The protocol, launched on June 17, is similar to Bitcoin’s (CRYPTO: BTC) Ordinals protocol, where assets are known as “inscriptions.”
Within the first 18 hours of going live, nearly 30,000 Ethscriptions had been created, according to Lehman.
With almost 30k Ethscriptions inThank you for seeing the massive potential here!
I am on Ethscriptions 24/7, but I need your help!
DM @proroketh to join our protocol Twitter chat. Ideas, bug reports, NO alpha, NO trading, NERDS ONLY! pic.twitter.com/udKdsVT0L8
— Middlemarch (@dumbnamenumbers) June 17, 2023
The assets utilize Ethereum “calldata,” or the data within a smart contract, to offer a “cheaper” and “more decentralized” minting process.
Currently, users are limited to image-only inscriptions, but Lehman says the protocol will allow for different file types to be uploaded in the future.
However, users can currently “ethscribe” any image, provided that it’s less than 96 kilobytes in size.
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Why It Matters: The launch of Ethscriptions offers a new way for users to create NFTs and other digital assets on the Ethereum blockchain.
Earlier this year, Bitcoin’s Ordinals protocol was launched allowing users to create and trade Bitcoin in smaller, more identifiable units known as “inscriptions.”
According to the Ordinals protocol, Satoshis are the smallest unit that can identify and trade BTC individually. Given that one BTC is equivalent to 100 million sats, inscriptions using this protocol offer a way to trade Bitcoin in smaller, more manageable amounts.
In the short time since the Ordinals protocol was introduced, the total number of inscriptions on Bitcoin has surged from zero to 10 million, demonstrating the growing interest and demand for smaller units of BTC.
Price Action: At the time of writing, ETH was trading at $1,732.63, up 0.30 % in the last 24 hours, according to Benzinga Pro.
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