Alright, they’re not exactly NFTs. Nonetheless, ‘TwelveFold’ is the name of Yuga Labs new venture to build creative on Bitcoin. There’s been substantial hype and interest in this unique corner of the NFT community, powered by inquisitiveness and bolstered by your everday crypto degen. It’s led to a very ‘underground’ feel that is bound to not last much longer – as things often move quickly in this space.
What are Bitcoin NFTs all about? First: they’re ‘ordinals,’ not NFTs. And now that Yuga Labs is jumping in, we might find that this newfound interest from NFT collectors might not be just a fad.
What’s An Ordinal?
In early February, we did a deep dive into the emergence of Bitcoin ordinals. Ordinals are effectively the Bitcoin equivalent of smart contract NFTs, without the smart contracts. That has made them much more rigid and hard to maneuver around relative to the smart contract capabilities that most users have become accustomed to today.
Unlike ERC-based smart contract NFTs, Bitcoin ordinals are just satoshis that are tied to specific content. However, much like ‘traditional NFTs’ that we know and love, ordinals are indeed ‘on-chain.’
The interest around ordinal’s uniqueness and the ties to the most iconic cryptocurrency of all time has the NFT community engaged. Now, it’s Yuga Labs turn to get involved – arguably the biggest conglomerate in NFTs, Yuga Labs oversees mainstay projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks, and will look to expand their reach onto Bitcoin now, too:
Introducing TwelveFold. A limited edition collection of 300 generative pieces, inscribed on satoshis on the Bitcoin blockchain.https://t.co/aFWEIhzqcI pic.twitter.com/PjWABKKBr4
— Yuga Labs (@yugalabs) February 27, 2023
TwelveFold: Yuga Labs Gets In The Mix
Yuga Labs has launched a home page for TwelveFold and signaled that a 300-piece limited edition project on Bitcoin is on the way. The NFTs (or in this case, ordinals) will be generative pieces and will “represent a complete art project.” Yuga has explicitly stated that the TwelveFold project “will not have other utility or interact with or be related to any previous, ongoing, or future Ethereum-based Yuga projects.”
TwelveFold arguably adds a major layer of legitimacy to an already hyped up corner of NFTs. Considering the price tags that many of Yuga Labs’ other NFT collections command, we would not be surprised to see TwelveFold command major dollars from some of the top spenders in NFTs, considering the immensely limited supply relative to other Yuga mints to date.
Much like the early days of NFTs themselves, the long game of Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions is about as unclear and fuzzy as it gets. That’s arguably part of the beauty behind this space – you might wake up one day and a whole new corner of the ecosystem can come alive. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.
