OnChainMonkey (OCM) has been one of the darlings in the NFT space during this crypto winter. Its floor price was once up over 100%, a feat achieved by few collections in this market. It also debuted the first 10K generative art collection on the Bitcoin blockchain when Ordinals fever was in full sway. Now, the team behind OCM is preparing its next move: a migration of its flagship NFT Ethereum collection to Bitcoin.
On Tuesday, the OCM decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) approved the migration proposal, with 99% voting in favor. The migration will move the 10K OCM Genesis collection to Bitcoin as Ordinals, the popular term that refers to non-fungible tokens on the world’s oldest decentralized blockchain.
To complete the migration, the proposer requested 350 ETH, around $570,000, to account for fees and the purchasing of Block 9 sats on which the OCM NFTs will be inscribed. Block 9 refers to the oldest sats in circulation and come from a transaction between the founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi, and Hal Finney, a cryptographer and early Bitcoin adopter.
In addition, the OCM team will attempt to create a parent-child relationship for the new collection on Bitcoin. This bit of technological wonder means that the underlying Ordinals will be organized as a complete collection rather than as singular NFTs. Creating a parent-child relationship on Bitcoin is akin to using a smart contract on Ethereum to group together NFTs. The original OCM collection on Bitcoin is one of the few collections to have done this.
The migration is scheduled for the Fall of 2023, though it appears no hard date has been set.
Bitcoin Ordinals Has Cooled after Hot Spring/Summer
After Casey Rodarmor, a Bitcoin developer, debuted the Ordinals protocol in early 2023, a gold rush occurred, with teams inscribing NFTs on the Bitcoin blockchain in droves. Quickly, the number of inscriptions on Bitcoin reached into the tens of thousands, with some stalwart NFT companies like Yuga Labs and Dust Labs joining in on the fun. Here are three stories from that period, all from four months ago.
First, Bitcoin soared to become the No. 2 blockchain for NFTs. In a 30-day period, it accounted for $170 million in sales with little wash trading compared to other blockchains and 6,600 total buyers, a relatively low total, indicating that BTC NFTs were fetching high prices. At that time, only the Ethereum blockchain stood above Bitcoin.
Next, we wrote a story about ‘Bitcoin Frogs,’ which continued a frog frenzy in Web3 inspired by the rise of the $PEPE meme token. In 24 hours, the floor price and trading volume of Bitcoin Frogs spiked so high that it surpassed Bored Ape Yacht Club and Gods Unchained, two top collections.
Lastly, activity on the Bitcoin blockchain reached an all-time frenzy with the adoption of the BRC-20 protocol, which allowed for the creation of meme coins on that blockchain. In fact, meme coins, more so than NFTs, accounted for most of the activity on Bitcoin, slowing the network down and creating transaction wait times that lasted more than 24 hours.
Although the hype surrounding Ordinals has slowed since April, OnChainMonkey’s move to migrate its entire Genesis collection shows the experiment is not dead yet. Rarity Sniper will keep an eye on this story and report back if needed.