BTC miners cash $5M on Ordinals, Reddit NFTs get botting backlash and more

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Bitcoin (BTC) miners have pocketed over $5 million from creating nonfungible token (NFT)-like inscriptions using the Ordinals protocol.

Transaction fees for Ordinals transactions exploded 240% from $1.5 million on March 10 to 5.2 million by April 12, according to Dune Analytics data.

The rise came on the back of a rather slow period between Feb. 16 and March 10, which from $1 million to $1.5 million. Prior to thatfees hit the $1 million mark within the first four weeks of the Ordinals protocol launching on Jan 21.

Transaction fees paid for Ordinals inscriptions hit the $5 million mark on April 11. Source: Dune Analytics

Nearly 1.1 million Ordinals have been inscribed on the Bitcoin network, mostly comprising JPEG images and text but also consisting of PDFs, video and audio formats.

Roughly 100 to 500 inscriptions are processed in each Bitcoin block, which usually contains between 2,000 to 3,000 transactions. Block 783,758 on April 3 saw a record 3,785 inscriptions, representing nearly 87% of the entire block.

Reddit’s Gen3 NFTs plagued by botting claims

Online community platform Reddit launched its third batch (Gen 3) of NFTs on April 12 — a “Futures Realities Collection” of Collectible Avatars created by over 100 artists.

Reddit explained in its announcement that the artists behind each limited edition Avatar will receive royalties upon each sale and no cryptocurrency was needed to purchase them.

However, the release didn’t come without issues. Many Reddit users claimed they missed out on the sale because spam bots swooped in almost instantly.

Man also believe the bots were the reason behind Reddit’s NFT shop crashing shortly after launch.

“They didn’t incorporate any type of spam or bot prevention, like a simple captcha. Of course the site got overloaded,” one user wrote with another remarking there was “no way you guys didn’t even think of stopping bots during this drop.”

Twitter user “Pastel Alpha” tweeted they managed to get “a good amount” of the NFTs “even though the site completely died” and thanked its “bot partners” for helping with its haul.

Reddit previously released a batch of Halloween-themed avatars in October, which was followed by and Super Bowl avatars in February.

Adidas releases first in series of dynamic NFTs

Shoe brand Adidas has released the first leg of its latest dynamic NFT collection “ALTs by Adidas” the latest move by the company on its quest to expand its NFT ecosystem.

The dynamic NFTs will evolve based on the decisions and engagement of the owner, according to an announcement on April 11 which described the collection as the “first step” towards owning an “ALTS by Adidas” identity.

The floor price of each Adidas NFT is 0.666 Ether (ETH) ($1,275) and has raked in 351 ETH ($672,000) in trading volume so far. There are now 8,989 owners, 56% of them unique.

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There are 16,000 items in total and the creators taking a 10% cut of each sale.

The ALTS by adidas” NFTs are selling for a minimum of around 0.66 ETH. Source: OpenSea

Collectors must buy and burn Phase 1 and 2 of Adidas’ “Into the Metaverse” tokens in order to receive the ALTS by Adidas NFT.

Be nonfungible, my friend: Bruce Lee enters Web3

A NFT collection commemorating the late Kung-Fu fighter and movie star, Bruce “Little Dragon” Lee, has been released by the Bruce Lee Estate in partnership with Shibuya, an NFT-driven video platform.

Plans for the release were revealed on April 11 when Lee’s Twitter account, managed by his family, shared an old video clip of Lee, which then transformed him into an animated version of himself.

The NFTs sold at a starting price of 0.008 ETH, or $15, and 13,907 were minted in the first 24 hours, totaling over $205,000 according to its smart contract address on Etherscan.

The NFTs were drawn by artist Emily “pplpleasr” Yang and were designed by Shannon Lee — Bruce Lee’s daughter.

Cover album of “House of Lee: Genesis” NFT. Source: Manifold

Despite it being an “open edition” collection, collectors can only mint a maximum of 100 of the NFTs.

Other Nifty News

NFT marketplace OpenSea launched “OpenSea Pro” last week, a new, specialized NFT marketplace aggregator aimed at serving the needs of professional NFT traders. The service was made possible by OpenSea’s acquisition of fellow NFT aggregator, Gem, in April 2022.

An NFT trader fat-fingered a bid for a free NFT buying it at 100 Ether ($191,000). The token was part of NFT marketplace OpenSea’s Gemesis NFT collection to commemorate the launch of OpenSea Pro on April 4. Some believe the trader meant to bid the token for $100 instead.

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