Innovation Beyond Ordinals: The Rise of Stamps and SRC-20 Tokens
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Innovation Beyond Ordinals: The Rise of Stamps and SRC-20 Tokens
Assuming you've already tried Ordinals, how do you explore Stamps?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: WILLIAM M. PEASTER
Translation: TechFlow
Recently, Ordinals have triggered an explosive wave of tokenization activity through "inscriptions" on Bitcoin (and other blockchains).
However, another relatively new Bitcoin tokenization protocol—Stamps—has also gradually been gaining attention lately.
Haven't heard of Stamps or SRC-20? Don't worry. In today's article, let's explore how Stamps work, how they differ from Ordinals, and how you can get involved in this space!
The Rise of Bitcoin Stamps
The Bitcoin Stamps system was launched in March 2023 by Mike In Space, initially as a proof-of-concept project on Counterparty (a Bitcoin Layer-2 that has existed since 2014). Thanks to updates in its underlying protocol, Stamps has fully transitioned onto Bitcoin itself and, since last summer, is now known as SRC-20.
Founder Mike originally envisioned Stamps as a way to mint permanent Bitcoin NFTs. However, the protocol has since expanded to replicate BRC-20, a type of fungible token that has flourished on Bitcoin following the rise of inscriptions after Casey Rodarmor introduced Ordinals in January 2023.
The key difference between Stamps and Ordinals lies in their architecture. Stamps store their metadata within multisig unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs), whereas Ordinals store their metadata in the “witness” section of Bitcoin transactions.
This design distinction reveals important trade-offs for developers. The UTXO approach makes Stamps non-prunable, thus appearing permanently secured, although they are more expensive to create than Ordinals. Conversely, Ordinals’ use of witness data ultimately makes them prunable, with lower creation costs compared to Stamps.
Therefore, while Ordinals may currently offer the best cost-to-persistence ratio for NFTs in the crypto space (you can also get on-chain NFTs on Ethereum, but they’re relatively more expensive to build than Ordinals), Stamps appear to provide the strongest guarantee of direct permanence at present.
Still, not everyone sees Stamps and Ordinals as purely beneficial!
For example, old-school hardline Bitcoin supporters like Luke Dashjr have recently attacked both Ordinals and Stamps, calling them spam attacks against Bitcoin. Dashjr’s newly launched Ocean mining pool is already set up to filter out inscription and Stamp transactions, and he has even proposed changing Bitcoin to a different proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm to resist NFT-supporting Bitcoin miners.
Perhaps the Bitcoin community will eventually split again over these divisions. Another battle over block size may be looming—one side favoring technological innovation via Ordinals and Stamps, the other insisting that “Bitcoin is just money.”
However, for now, Dashjr’s recent comments seem only to add fuel to the fire, as interest and activity around Stamps have recently reached new all-time highs. Indeed, the very first and second Stamps were just sold together for 1.7 BTC (approximately $150,000), signaling surging demand.
Of course, the Stamps market may undergo cycles of boom and bust like any asset class, but regardless, the technology is legitimate and compelling. What makes Stamps interesting isn’t just their permanence, but also the fact that, like Ordinals, they introduce a new token standard that opens previously unavailable possibilities on Bitcoin.
Smart contract platforms like Ethereum and Solana have long enjoyed native token standards and hardly needed such technologies. In contrast, the Bitcoin ecosystem began exploding in 2023 as advanced innovations like Ordinals and Stamps started emerging and unleashing unprecedented demand.
In other words, we’re currently witnessing a renaissance for Bitcoin. So, assuming you’ve already experimented with Ordinals, how do you start exploring Stamps?
For wallets, I recommend starting with a Bitcoin wallet like Leather (formerly Hiro), which supports both Ordinals and Stamps as well as BRC-20 and SRC-20 tokens. If you're familiar with browser wallets like Coinbase Wallet, MetaMask, or Rainbow, you’ll find Leather easy to use. Despite being Bitcoin-centric, it offers a user experience similar to these mainstream products.
That said, whatever you do, avoid using older Bitcoin wallets to experiment with Stamps. You could lose your assets if you attempt to manage them with incompatible wallets!
Once you’ve set up a compatible Bitcoin wallet, you can begin looking to mint Stamp NFTs or acquire SRC-20 tokens. OpenStamp is one platform where you can currently do both, though there are also several early-stage markets worth considering, including RareStamp, Stampscan, and StampedNinja. If you're interested in minting your own Stamps, try the Stampsbot platform.
Ultimately, whether Stamps will become a permanent fixture in the crypto ecosystem remains an open question. Yet, their current popularity and the novel possibilities they unlock for Bitcoin cannot be ignored. Combined with Ordinals, Stamps are likely to make Bitcoin increasingly vibrant with innovation in the coming years—alongside growing tensions with hardcore Bitcoin maximalists who despise “JPGs.”
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