📖Overview
Creating a New Category of PFP Made Possible by Bitcoin Ordinals
Last updated
Creating a New Category of PFP Made Possible by Bitcoin Ordinals
Last updated
When developing the Ninjas project for Bitcoin Ordinals, we anchored ourselves to a central question: "How can we leverage Bitcoin's unique capabilities in ways that would be challenging on Ethereum?" This inquiry led us to explore various creative avenues, some of which might seem unconventional at first glance, like our fully on-chain Super Nintendo emulator. However, as I'll explain, these choices aren't arbitrary. For instance, the SNES emulator is a collectible that aligns with the 90s nostalgia theme of our project, while other features focus on strengthening the Ninjas' use case as a Web3 Profile Picture (PFP) for digital identity and community.
On the technical front, we leaned in heavily on what we see as the strongest feature of Ordinals: Recursive Endpoints. These endpoints transform an Ordinals project from a simple work of art into a versatile platform, offering an API that other creators can use in the future. They do so in a way that significantly simplifies the process compared to Ethereum, making them accessible even to someone with no coding knowledge. Credit to Danny Yang of OnChainMonkey, who kicked this off by inscribing p5.js on-chain, enabling the potential for artists to use recursion and p5.js in an on-chain and decentralized manner. Something that only exists today on Bitcoin.
In line with this, we've made each Ninja trait individually accessible, inscribing them as SVGs that allow customization via CSS. Our aim is to make every component of our project composable, enabling others to use and adapt it as they see fit. We've added libraries for HTML Canvas to transform SVG layers into PNGs, manipulate layers into GIF animation frames, and even detect various holidays, swapping traits for special editions. Our SNES emulator is part of this composability, complete with documentation that allows others to inscribe playable ROMs in the browser that will exist forever.
While Bitcoin Ordinals' limitations lie in the lack of smart contract capabilities akin to Ethereum—don't mistake the lack of smart contracts for a lack of dynamic utility. In fact, Ordinals offers unequalled functionality at the presentation layer of digital artwork. For example, through the new Parent-Child Endpoint, projects can create fully on-chain, token-gated CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) applications. Think of a blog or MySpace-style website where token holders have the unique ability to inscribe new content or add their own functionality, all on-chain. The Child Endpoint introduces a new layer of collaboration and social experimentation for a fraction of the cost or complexity of developing custom Ethereum smart contracts. While not a part of our v1 launch, Ninjas plan to use this endpoint as part of a future upgrade.
Future upgrade you say? Why yes, I'm glad you asked. Even though inscriptions are immutable, a new feature called the Sat Endpoint leverages re-inscription to allow them to be upgraded in a way that can be permissioned by holders. Ninjas has the distinct honor of being one of the first major projects to be upgradeable and utilize the Sat Endpoint in this way. It not only allows us to continue to develop the project, adding new functionality and features over time, but does so in a way giving the holders total control and immutability by default. Even with this guarantee, we plan to gradually ossify and lock down the usage of the Sat Endpoint over time. Eventually burning all Satoshis called by our Sat Endpoints, forever freezing the collection.
While Ethereum is the ideal platform for projects that desire to create custom logic to issue, escrow, and transfer tokens for something like NFT staking; Ordinals is far superior in terms of lower cost and complexity to create large-scale, fully on-chain, programmable applications embedded into digital artwork. As you'll read, Ninjas contain features that allow customization, animation, overlays, and more. Features that will only be enhanced and further developed in the coming months. This versatility makes Ordinals superior assets for personal branding and usage across various social platforms. Need a "gm" sticker for a post on X? You've got it in one click. Want to animate our PFP and turn it into a GIF for your Discord avatar? The tools are not only there for you, they are part of the computer program built directly into your Ninja PFP.
