Bitcoin Explorer Ord.io Secures $2 Million Funding, Adopts Runes Tokens – Decrypt
With the Runes protocol launch set for this weekend alongside the Bitcoin halving, Ordinals explorer Ord.io is strengthening its treasury, revealing on Wednesday the raise of $2 million for the purpose of hiring more developers.
Bitcoin Frontier Fund and Sora Ventures led the pre-seed funding round. Other investors include Eden Block, Arca, Longhash Ventures, Daxos Capital, Portal Ventures, UTXO Management, Rubik Ventures, VitalTao Capital, Antalpha Ventures, Kommune Fund, Edessa Capital, PetRock Capital, PG Capital, Shake and Bake Productions, Re7 Capital, and Balaji Fund.
Established in March 2023 by software developer Zach Meyer and pseudonymous NFT historian Leonidas, Ord.io enables users to discover, upvote, and comment on Ordinal inscriptions.
“I’m incredibly excited about the wave of innovation and exploration emerging on Bitcoin. Products and technologies that were previously confined to various alt-chains are being reimagined and built on Bitcoin,” Meyer said in a statement.
“In years past, much of the developer excitement was centered around projects like Ethereum and Solana,” he continued, “but we are witnessing Bitcoin reclaim the mind-share amongst developers.”
Collectors have the ability to arrange their search by metrics, such as the Inscription number or whether the inscription is “cursed” or “normal.” Cursed Inscriptions refer to Ordinals that the Ord indexer initially overlooked, causing them not to appear in wallets and marketplaces.
Inscriptions can also be searched using specific attributes, or “Satributes,” as they are known on Ord.io. For instance, an inscription labeled “pizza” contains a sat used to purchase the two Papa John’s pizzas by Laszlo Hanyecz in 2010—the iconic “Bitcoin pizza” incident.
Since the launch of the Ordinals protocol in January 2023, over 65 million inscriptions have been made on the Bitcoin blockchain, according to data compiled by Dune.
In September, Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor announced plans to launch the Runes protocol to power fungible tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain. Runes aims to address many issues facing Ordinals inscriptions, such as wasted block space.
The Runes protocol is scheduled to debut alongside the Bitcoin halving, expected to occur on Saturday. It is believed to be a more efficient method to mint fungible tokens on Bitcoin than last year’s Ordinals-based BRC-20 standard, which started as an experiment. Some BRC-20 tokens have experienced significant devaluation leading up to the Runes launch.
“We believe that minting Runes will be a highly popular activity on the Bitcoin network in the coming year,” Ord.io co-founder Leonidas told Decrypt. “We anticipate half of all Bitcoin transactions to be mints, and see an amazing opportunity to help develop experiences around minting. This begins with discoverability.”
Leonidas stated that Ord.io is concentrating on the initial stage of the Rune rollout, emphasizing the belief that Runes will become the preeminent fungible token protocol on Bitcoin. Looking towards the future, Leonidas mentioned that Ord.io will continue to enhance the user’s experience by focusing on customer needs and streamlining the platform.
“When a feature seems complete, you must challenge yourself to find at least one way to improve it,” he explained. “By doing this repeatedly, you can create something truly exceptional.”
Although the future of Runes remains uncertain—despite the apparent excitement mounting around the launch—Leonidas stated that the primary goal of this raise is to persist in building on Bitcoin.
“When individuals come to Bitcoin seeking to collect JPEGs, trade meme coins, or engage in DeFi, we aim to be the trusted platform they turn to,” he noted. “The exact landscape in five years is difficult to predict, but one thing is certain: We will continue building on Bitcoin, and exclusively on Bitcoin.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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