What are Bitcoin Ordinal Wallets?
Bitcoin ordinal wallets are specialized tools for engaging with Bitcoin NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). These wallets offer unique features and functionalities tailored to the needs of this emerging digital asset class. They are essential for anyone looking to participate in the creation, acquisition, storage, and trading of Bitcoin NFTs.
Bitcoin ordinal wallets utilize a unique cryptographic technique known as "ordinal signatures" to enhance security and prevent common attacks associated with traditional wallets.
List of Wallets Supporting Bitcoin Ordinals
How do Bitcoin Ordinal Wallets Work?
- Cryptographic Setup: Each ordinal wallet is associated with a pair of keys: an ordinal public key and an ordinal private key. These keys are derived from the regular public and private keys using one-way functions, which are computationally easy to perform but practically impossible to reverse.
- Transaction Creation: When initiating a transaction from one ordinal wallet to another, the sender creates a transaction specifying the amount, the recipient's ordinal public key, and a counter. The counter serves as a unique identifier for the transaction and increases sequentially with each new transaction. The sender then signs the transaction using its ordinal private key.
- Transaction Verification: Upon receiving a transaction, the recipient's ordinal wallet verifies the signature using the sender's ordinal public key. It also checks that the counter is higher than the last counter it received from that sender. If both conditions are met, the transaction is considered valid, and the recipient's balance is updated accordingly.
Advantages of Bitcoin Ordinal Wallets
- Instant Validity: Transactions are instantly considered valid upon being signed and received, without relying on network confirmation.
- Prevention of Attacks: Ordinal wallets prevent double-spending, replaying, and reordering attacks by uniquely identifying transactions with counters and ensuring their sequential nature.
- Privacy and Anonymity: Transactions only reveal the ordinal public keys of the sender and recipient, maintaining privacy and anonymity as these keys cannot be directly linked to their regular public keys or identities.