TwelveFold is a new collection of Bitcoin NFTs. It is based on a 12×12 grid that the company describes as “a visual allegory for the cartography of data on the Bitcoin blockchain.” The biggest piece of news attached to the story? TwelveFold will have no utility or connection to the company’s notable Ethereum-based projects.
The collection will be launched by $4 billion company YugaLabs and was designed by Michael Figge, Yuga’s chief content officer, who before joining the company in November created the NFT project 10KTF—which is based around a digital storefront where users can mint unique NFTs featuring their avatar on various metaverse-ready digital wearables.
Although Yuga said the collection of 300 NFTs would be auctioned off later this week, it didn’t give an exact time. The company said it would give a 24-hour notice with auction details and exact timing via social media.
The difference is that while NFTs on Ethereum and Solana mostly point to off-chain databases that contain an NFT’s main image, the Bitcoin NFTs, or Ordinals, take advantage of recent updates to Bitcoin’s code to store art on the blockchain itself. Essentially, the collection utilizes a new protocol called Ordinal Theory, NFT creators are “inscribing” non-fungible tokens onto the smallest unit of Bitcoin, called a Satoshi, which is one-hundred-millionth of a Bitcoin.
Ordinals have pumped up enthusiasm in the NFT industry over the past month even as Crypto Winter lingers. Already, more than 213,000 Ordinals have been inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain, according to data from Dune Analytics, as the technology continues to attract big players in the NFT space like DeGods.
The motivation for Yuga to enter the Bitcoin NFT space as it faces a threat to its business from the ongoing battle between large NFT marketplaces over creator royalties. Earlier this month, in response to a challenge from upstart NFT marketplace Blur, the market leader, OpenSea, moved to a policy of optional creator earnings.
In a blog post published Monday, Solano explained Yuga’s thinking on the Ordinals project: “All of these choices are a departure from what’s expected from Yuga. But, you know. Fuck doing expected things.”
