Key Points
- Bitcoin Ordinals explorer Ord.io has received $2 million in pre-seed funding for its Runes protocol expansion.
- The funds will also be used to hire more developers and enhance existing features.
Ord.io, an explorer for Bitcoin Ordinals, has successfully closed a $2 million pre-seed funding round.
The round was co-led by Bitcoin Frontier Fund and Sora Ventures, with participation from several other funds and angel investors.
The details of the round’s valuation and structure were not disclosed by Ord.io.
Utilizing the Funds
Ord.io’s platform allows users to search, browse, and interact with Ordinals inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The new funding will be used to expand support for the upcoming Runes protocol, a new fungible token standard for Bitcoin set to launch at the halving.
The company also plans to expand its team by hiring more developers.
The Ordinals Protocol
The Bitcoin Ordinals protocol, launched by Casey Rodarmor in January 2023, provides a method for storing and trading digital content on Bitcoin.
Using satoshis, the smallest units of bitcoin, users can engrave NFTs, BRC-20s, and other arbitrary data directly onto the Bitcoin blockchain, creating unique tradeable assets.
Ord.io has spearheaded several initiatives in the Ordinals ecosystem since its launch in March 2023.
Runes: A New Fungible Token Standard
Runes, also developed by Rodarmor, is a new fungible token standard for Bitcoin, set to launch at the halving.
Franklin Templeton, an investment firm, stated that Runes has the potential to help Bitcoin fungible tokens compete against the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems.
Runes provides a more efficient solution than the UTXO bloat caused by the existing BRC-20 minting process and is compatible with Bitcoin’s Layer 2 Lightning Network.
The Upcoming Bitcoin Halving
The next Bitcoin halving event is now less than three days away.
This event, which occurs approximately every four years, will see the subsidy reward for miners on the network drop from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block.
However, miners will continue to earn additional transaction fee rewards for each block mined as usual.