Bitcoin’s BRC-69 standard eliminates data limit for Ordinals

Bitcoin Ordinals, often called bitcoin’s (BTC) version of NFTs, are experiencing a significant surge as a new token standard, BRC-69, was launched on July 3. The latest standard brings an innovative solution to reduce the time and cost of making inscriptions on the bitcoin blockchain.

Until now, Ordinals had a 4-megabyte limit on what could be inscribed on bitcoin. However, the introduction of BRC-69 aims to overcome this limitation through a mechanism called “recursive inscriptions.” This mechanism empowers users to extract data from existing inscriptions and utilize it to create new ones, bypassing the size restriction.

The BRC-69 token standard, as described on the protocol’s GitHub page, enables the recycling of already inscribed data and reduces costs by more than 90%.

The simplicity of BRC-69 has been acknowledged by the team at Luminex, the launchpad that announced the new standard. They explained that minters only need to inscribe a single line of text instead of a full image. This text allows the final image to be automatically rendered on all ordinal frontends using on-chain resources, thanks to recursive inscriptions.

BRC69 token standard to address Bitcoin’s block space challenges

The limited block space of Bitcoin has been a topic of debate since the launch of Ordinals. High transaction fees and a bloated blockchain have raised concerns among the community. However, recursive inscriptions offer a way to address these challenges. 

According to Leonidas, a self-proclaimed NFT historian and Ordinals collector, recursive inscriptions have massive implications. Users can explore new possibilities by evading the 4-megabyte limit, as “the sky is the limit,” he tweeted.

Leonidas further highlighted that bitcoin is effectively gaining an internal internet, where files can request data from one another. The precise applications of this advancement are yet to be fully realized, but it undoubtedly marks a critical moment in the history of bitcoin.

This latest development adds to the growing excitement in the Ordinals space. Recently, Bitmaps has emerged as a leader in daily bitcoin inscriptions by introducing a protocol that enables users to claim ownership of bitcoin blocks, securing the top position in the process.