blockworks.co
The biggest Bitcoin block ever has just been mined, 14 years after the blockchain went live.
It contained an Ordinal, the controversial new genre of $NFT which recently debuted on Bitcoin.
In an apparent tease for a forthcoming bitcoin $NFT collection, Luxor Mining and popular Bitcoin figure Udi Wertheimer mined the largest-ever bitcoin block, the company announced Tuesday.
Block 774628 housed the “Taproot Wizard,” a play on the legendary “magic internet money” meme featuring a bitcoin wizard. It was 3.96MB large, close to Bitcoin’s 4MB block size limit (which can technically be stretched with SegWit).
The transaction containing the Ordinal made up 3.94MB, about 99.5%. There were 63 transactions in total, including the 6.25 $BTC ($149,000) coinbase reward, which also went to Luxor.
Luxor announced the block via Twitter Tuesday evening, teasing followers that other wizards may be available soon. The firm earned 0.009 $BTC ($209) for successfully mining the block.
Ordinals — the new platform taking the industry by storm — store texts, images, SCG or HTML on-chain, attached to individual satoshis, bitcoin’s smallest unit currently worth $0.000231.
Read More: Bitcoin NFTs: Love ‘Em or Hate ‘Em, You Can’t Ignore ‘Em
Similar to the $NFT concept, inscribed satoshis can then be transferred freely via the Bitcoin blockchain.
The features are made possible using a loophole from the Taproot upgrade in 2021, which enabled “practically unlimited (capped by block size) storage using Opcodes, an executable script in a txn that can store arbitrary data,” Blockworks Research analyst Matt Fiebach said.
Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor boasts the $NFT protocol holds digital artifacts to a “higher standard,” he wrote in a blog post. Ordinals cannot be stored off-chain or on centralized servers, he said.
Industry members continue to take a mixed view on Bitcoin NFTs, but Ordinals appear to be here to stay.