What Are the Top 10 Ordinal NFTs to Watch?
Ordinal projects to watch for include BTC DeGods, Ordinal Maxi Biz, Bitcoin Bandits, Nullish, Bitcoin Frogs, Taproot Wizards, RedactedNFTs, Lil’ Peepo, BTC Shrooms and Satoshi Degens. These projects combine the rareness of specific sats and art.
Key Takeaways
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Ordinals allow projects to inscribe art onto specific satoshis (sats), introducing a gamified dual layer, which combines the rarity of the sat and the art inscribed on it.
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Five Ordinal projects to watch right now are: BTC DeGods, Ordinal Maxi Biz, Bitcoin Bandits, Nullish’s collections, and Bitcoin Frogs
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Five upcoming Ordinal projects to watch are: Taproot Wizards, Redacted NFTs, Lil’ Peepo, BTC Shrooms, and Satoshi Degens.
Ordinals, shmordinals. What are Ordinals, and why are they all the rage on Bitcoin these days? And why has the Ordinal Protocol enraged an entire community of Bitcoin purists?
Let’s find out.
What Are Ordinals?
The Ordinal Protocol has brought on extraordinary changes to the Bitcoin blockchain. In essence, it’s transformed the network from a store of value to something more akin to smart contract blockchains.
Ordinals have also given us the ability to enumerate satoshis (sats, for short). This newfound ability has given rise to rare sats, or special sats, because now we can track where each sat came from. Imagine owning a sat that was once in the wallet of Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road. We can all agree how awesome and historical that would be, right?
The Ordinal Protocol lets us do a bit more.
By allowing us to track individual sats, we can now inscribe art onto specific, individual sats, thereby introducing a gamified dual layer for collectors. In other words, collectors can now focus on the rarity of the sat on which their jpeg is inscribed, as well as the jpeg itself!
Below, we review the most notable ordinal projects in general.
Top 5 Ordinal Projects Out Right Now
Here are the top 5 Ordinal projects that you should be paying attention to:
BTC DeGods
BTC DeGods are an obvious first. DeGods were the first project to purchase an entire block, so that they could launch the entire Ordinal collection from that single block. DeGods aren’t an original Ordinals collection, by the way.
The original DeGods are from Solana. In total, 10,000 gods were minted at the start, but the team had imposed what came to be known as the Paperhands B*tch Tax (PHBT). In short, a tax of 33.3% was levied to sellers if they listed their god under the floor price and it sold.
All 535 of these gods were consequently burned, and left for dead thanks to the PHBT… until now. In March, the team decided to bring the burned gods back to Bitcoin, the mother chain. The current floor price for BTC DeGods is 1.2 BTC, by the way. (For reference, the mint cost 0.33 BTC!)
Ordinal Maxi Biz
Ordinal Maxi Biz (OMB) took the Ordinal space by storm and by surprise when it first came on the scene. zk-Shark, the founder, quit his job on Wall Street to launch the anarchist-themed project.
The project is split into 3 collections: Blue eyes, Red eyes, and the latest, Green eyes. For context, the originals reached an ATH of roughly 4.2 BTC, and the Green eyes collection kicked off the mint at 0.09 BTC.
The collection launched with a guerrilla marketing campaign encouraging other projects to purchase and burn CryptoPunks, an act considered sacrilege by many (and highly befitting of an anarchist project).
Two projects participated: DeGods and Bitcoin Bandits, both of which won 33 whitelist allocations each. Most of these spots were raffled off. In other words, OMB has already made history via the punk burning, and the project didn’t have to spend a single sat from its own funds.
Genius.
Bitcoin Bandits
Bitcoin Bandits is an OG project on Bitcoin. The bandits have a community on Bitcoin unlike any other. The only other community that’s even close to bringing this kind of meme energy is Sappy Seals, and they’re on Ethereum.
Chartfu, the Bandits’ fearless leader, is a no-nonsense founder. As CDO of Magic Eden, he was instrumental in the company’s pivot to Ordinals. (Rumor is, he had threatened to walk out if they didn’t pivot.) He was also one of the chief organizers of the cryptopunk burn for both the Bitcoin Bandits and Bitcoin DeGods. (A walking win.)
Nullish
Undoubtedly the most legendary OG sat hunter, Nullish had teamed up early with zk-Shark and other Bitcoiners in the space to devise and push the rare sat narrative. Today, Nullish’s collections comprise abstract art pieces that are inscribed on rare sats.
Holders of all 5 of the main Nullish pieces across Bitcoin and Ethereum received 8 whitelist spots each from the OMB Green eyes mint (and they didn’t even have to burn a punk!).
Bitcoin Frogs
Bitcoin Frogs is the first 10,000-piece Ordinal project to have sold out via a free mint on the Lightning Network. The Bitcoin Frogs were instrumental in spearheading the space because they made people believe that a massively organic community on Bitcoin was possible.
The free mint helped onboard many people who wanted to own an Ordinal, but didn't have the means, nor the knowledge or capital, to do so. The frogs community banded together to execute a concerted campaign. The campaign’s mission? To onboard as many people onto Ordinals as possible, and not just from the native Bitcoin community, but from Ethereum and Solana as well.
And they accomplished this goal with the most hands-on approach imaginable.
Accompanied by the founder, community members flew to the NFT NYC event. They made their way to Pubkey, an OG Bitcoin Bar frequented by… you guessed it, Bitcoiners. Once there, they began handing out as many frogs as they could. They sat beside interested users, going so far as to help them set up an Xverse wallet (a Bitcoin wallet that supports Ordinals). And they managed to gift hundreds of frogs inside a week.
The stuff of legends.
Top 5 Upcoming Ordinal Projects
Some of the projects below are launching, or may have launched around the time this piece is published. The Ordinal space moves ridiculously fast.
Taproot Wizards
Taproot Wizards has one of the most interesting origins in crypto, one that can be traced back to the early beginnings of Bitcoin. Way back in the day, a user by the name of mavensbot posted a crudely drawn image of a wizard in the Bitcoin subreddit, which boosted the membership numbers in the community drastically.
When Ordinals came around recently, Udi Wertheimer, also a Bitcoin OG, decided to launch Taproot Wizards by referring to the original drawing as inspiration. (Surprise! mavensbot was also involved.)
The Taproot Wizards mission is to onboard as many people onto Bitcoin as possible, and to educate its audience in non-intimidating and fun ways. They’re prepping the launch as we speak, so keep an eye out.
RedactedNFTs
RedactedNFTs is the long-awaited, mysterious Ordinal project by BitGod. BitGod launched OXBT, the second BRC-20 token ever, and the first token with an actual promise of utility. (The very first BRC-20 token, ORDI, was launched as an experiment.)
BitGod is given a lot of the credit for the recent mass onboarding to Ordinals and Bitcoin at large. With numerous partnerships across the space, and armed with a deep understanding of persuasion marketing, BitGod plans to launch his project within the next few weeks. Details are scarce due to the secretive nature of the team.
Lil’ Peepo
Lil’ Peepo is quite possibly the toughest project to get a whitelist spot for. That’s because the project doesn’t do whitelist allocations. All Pepe’s Pizza and Inscribed Pepes holders received 1 whitelist spot each, to gift to a "real friend", someone they believe truly deserves to be in the community.
BTC Shrooms
BTC Shrooms is one of the earliest—if not the earliest—Ordinal project ever, and it’s launching soon. The project comprises 210 pixelated mushrooms, some of them cataloging Bitcoin’s history and its most important elements. The art is fantastic, and is reminiscent of Super Mario’s early pixel art directions.
Satoshi Degens
With a supply of 200, Satoshi Degens is a small project that’s not about making money. In fact, it’s the founder’s passion project. Tominator is obsessed with collecting rare sats, and he wants the project to be a fun way to introduce people to them, without collectors having to spend a small fortune.
The artist is also free to work without any constraints, so the two worked together like a charm. The art is highly degen, and trait rarity increases in tandem with the rarity of the sat it’s inscribed on. And because the team wants to foster a community of art collectors, to remain inside the community, you must remain active and contribute.
Sounds like they’ve put a lot of thought and fun into this one.
Ordinals: Not a Meta, Not Hype
Are Ordinals just hype? Certainly not. When you take a closer look at the tech, Ordinals just make sense. Bitcoin doesn’t need smart contracts. The art can be inscribed directly, and with recursive inscriptions, we can build protocols on Bitcoin too. (Yes, bet that DeFi is coming to Bitcoin.)
Ordinals may very well spark the next bull run. According to Vitalik, it’s bringing builder culture back to Bitcoin, which has always been the safest asset anyway. And now that Bitcoin will soon be able to offer what the other chains do too, doesn’t it make sense to return full circle to the mother chain?
This article is for information purposes only and should not be taken as financial advice.
Valerioshi is the 4th president of X+, one of the most exclusive communities in web3, for holders who hold 10 or more DeGods. Along with the burn team, he led the CryptoPunk burning campaign for DeGods, successfully raising more than US$100,000 in under 30 hours. He runs Degen Reports, and is host of The Degen Hour as well as the X+ Sigma Lounge, both weekly Twitter spaces. Follow the author on Twitter @valerioshi_
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