03/02/2023 Giant Bitcoin 'Taproot Wizard' NFT Minted in Collaboration With Luxor Mining Pool

Luxor Mining collaborated with independent developer Udi Wertheimer to mint the NFT advertising “Magic Internet JPEGs” in “the largest Bitcoin block ever mined.”

Independent developer Udi Wertheimer claims he minted a giant image of what appears to be a bald, bearded wizard donning sunglasses and promoting “magic internet JPEGs” on the Bitcoin blockchain via the Ordinals protocol.

His announcements in the Discord channel “taprootwizards.com” and on Twitter sparked further flames of division between Bitcoin purists and Ordinals proponents. The block that minted the non-fungible token (NFT) was mined by bitcoin mining firm Luxor Technologies, which said it was “the largest Bitcoin block” ever mined.

Solana and Bitcoin NFT trading hits record numbers
Yuga Labs restructures, NFT prices grow: what’s next for the market?
If LaMelo Ball Wins NBA Rookie of the Year, This NFT Gets Rarer

Battle lines were drawn when the Ordinals protocol, which stores non-fungible tokens on Bitcoin, launched on the dominant blockchain last month. That showdown created two factions – purists who insist on using bitcoin (BTC) exclusively for payments and Ordinals fans who welcome NFTs, including this “Taproot wizard” sketch that nearly filled an entire 4 megabyte (MB) block, incurred no transaction fees (although a premium off-chain fee was likely paid) and left Bitcoiners of both stripes mystified.

The image itself is a throwback to anearly Bitcoin memefeaturing a similar wizard, crudely rendered in MSPaint, inviting all and sundry to “Join us” on the then-popular r/bitcoin subreddit.

Bitcoin transaction blocks are capped at 4MB, while individual transactions are limited to 1MB unless a user directly approaches a miner to process a larger non-standard transaction (like the wizard NFT) that fills an entire block. The image, which was a massive 3.94 MB, had many Bitcoiners asking: Who would go through the trouble of processing this non-standard NFT mint (or “inscription” in Ordinals lingo) and why?

Earlier Thursday, Wertheimer tweeted about the Taproot wizard, stating that “we made history” and linking to the Taproot Wizards Discord channel. The channel contains a Jan. 31 announcement message from Wertheimer alluding to the future minting of the Taproot Wizard.

He and Luxor CEO Nick Hansen collaborated to ensure the Taproot wizard NFT was included in a block mined by Luxor, according to a Luxor spokesperson.

Amid much online criticism, Luxor Chief Operating Officer Ethan Vera tweeted the company views the Taproot Wizard as “short term R&D” as it looks to maximize the revenue potential for both the company and its clients.

"Luxor's payout method is based on a full-pay-per-share model, meaning miners get paid an equal market rate for their hashrate based on the total value of bitcoin and transaction fees mined in a given timeframe," Colin Harper, head of research and content at Luxor, told CoinDesk.

"Miners are paid the same regardless of how many (or how few) blocks Luxor mines in a given timeframe. As such, any transactions that weren't included in the NFT block would have been included in subsequent blocks and the variance would even out. This block did not affect miner compensation."

Veteran Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr, who vehemently opposes having Ordinals on Bitcoin, says he’s developed a rudimentary “spam filter” that screens forinscriptionsand prevents them from being relayed through the Bitcoin network. An inscription is when arbitrary content (like text or an image) is added to sequentially numbered satoshis (sats) – the smallest units in Bitcoin – to create unique “digital artifacts.”

Critics of Ordinals argue that NFTs will compete with traditional payment transactions by crowding blocks and driving up transaction fees.

Casey Rodarmor, creator of the Ordinals protocol, disagrees but isn’t fazed by Luke’s new invention. In fact, he welcomes it.

“It filters inscriptions from an individual Core node’s mempool,” Rodarmor told CoinDesk. “I actually told him how to look for inscriptions to filter them.”

Arts

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/02/02/giant-bitcoin-taproot-wizard-nft-minted-in-collaboration-with-luxor-mining-pool/

Interesting NFTs
Smile to Shreds, Neon Gwen
The First KayPikeFashion Mint Ever. Ever feel so joyful and were grinning so hard you felt you could split in half? That punk rebel yell of glee when you pull of a particularly refined stunt? This is the paint of dreams, fangs and neon. Hellish and hard to pull off. I was able to with this work quietly paint a sweet inner tale of childhood influences, rat fink and autobody shops. All while pretending to paint gwenom for the audience. More on that in bonus material. This is my alternate animation made specifically for crypto art collectors. It will only ever exist in this format. You get the Shiny, unused in media verified image. More on that in the bonus material. Mixed Media: Bio/Digital. Glycerin on 5'9" human skin 10-14 hours Performance art. Shot on Canon EOS RP. 16 + hours Photoshop and DaVinci Resolve. All Works are SFW. Art has been Seen on the front page of Reddit, Featured in the New York Times, Galileo.tv, and multiple other promotions including Twitch.tv, Disney Interactive, RIOT games, WB games, AMD and more! More on how this art is unique and potentially explosive in the NFT world: https://youtu.be/CXbNF2Y6srs ------------------------- The purchase of this NFT Grants the buyer unique bonus material. Physical Mail Bonus Package: A verified physical Art Print. Autographed from the artist in 12x16. Please allow a few weeks for delivery. Digital Bonus Package: This image in .mp4. An "About the Art" Video and an "From the Artist" introduction. A README.txt about the artwork with some personal notes and Links relevant to the artwork.
Right Place & Right Time (bitcoin hourly price offset)
Each day, a new composition for the Master is generated autonomously using a data feed of Bitcoin's last 24 hours of price action. Each hour's price programmatically controls rotation, scale, and position of a correlating layer. Astute viewers will surmise the day's price volatility simply by examining the artwork. While the daily image generation is the result of autonomous API calls, utilizing an algorithm the artist wrote, the artist has chosen to retain a control token. This token allows him to fine-tune variables associated with his algorithm, in addition to addressing aesthetic concerns within the life-cycle of the artwork. Layer state, alpha, hue, saturation, and brightness are elements the artist has retained control of in order that this artwork remain a living work-in-progress. An earlier iteration of this artwork was featured as a nightly projection mapping video on the face of the Daniels Fisher Clocktower, as part of ETH Denver 2020. Access to this and additional exclusive content awaits the master token owner at the artist's NFT Portal: https://collect.mattkane.com/minted-works/right-place-right-time-bitcoin-hourly-price-offset/
No Favour (cold) #17/25
No Favour for you. Cold variation.
Chromie Squiggle #6339
Simple and easily identifiable, each squiggle embodies the soul of the Art Blocks platform. Consider each my personal signature as an artist, developer, and tinkerer. Public minting of the Chromie Squiggle is permanently paused. They are now reserved for manual distribution to collectors and community members over a longer period of time. Please visit OpenSea to explore Squiggles available on the secondary market.
Fuku-Shiva
The term “Fuku” refers to fortune or good luck. “Shiva” refers to the Hindu deity who represents strongly polar qualities, both severe and delicate. On a beach inspired by adventures on Phi Phi island in Thailand, three youths cavort. Two are representational figures and the third is psychologically rendered. A dynamic relationship ensues between the triad; a reciprocity of active and passive states. The boy on the right engages in maneuvers of evasion, defense, and is dressed in a speedo which reiterates the colors and symbolism of the caution tape on the left and upper right frame of the composition. In concurrent reaction the psychedelic figure shoots out a rocket powered paper airplane. The nude boy seated in the froth and sand approaches in passive repose, and is met with active attention but equal physical reserve by the psychedelic being. Perhaps the most naked figure is also the least representational. Looming large, dynamic, and active, it engages its companions playfully. Various symbols interject into the otherwise naturalistic scene, most notably a beach ball and two contaminated barrels nested in the sand. The upright barrel reads “FukuShima” in Kanji. The barrel laying down reads “Dharma”. To the left the scene is bounded by caution tape, reiterating the danger of the nuclear waste while also hosting alien archetypes, whose presence, as is the nature of these entities, runs up and just behind the consciousness of the psychedelic figure’s eggshell-like skull.