Bitcoin Frontier Fund Launches Accelerator to Boost Ordinals Adoption

The Bitcoin Frontier Fund, previously generally known as Stacks Ventures, introduced on Monday an accelerator centered on the NFT-like Ordinals, with plans to award a number of startups with mentorship alternatives and $100,000 grants.

Led by entrepreneur and influencer Trevor Owens, the Fund goals to foster development round Ordinals, the Bitcoin-based protocol launched this January by developer Casey Rodarmor that has led to rampant experimentation round crypto’s oldest coin.

Ordinals permits for the creation of NFT-like property on Bitcoin known as inscriptions, and the protocol has gone on to yield improvements like Bitcoin-native tokens known as BRC-20s. Owens instructed Decrypt that regardless of headwinds within the enterprise area, the potential for brand new corporations to emerge by Ordinals and related creations stays profitable.

“Constructing within the bear market now will probably be when the following unicorns are began,” Owens mentioned, invoking the time period used to explain personal startups valued at over a billion {dollars}. “There are fewer individuals, however that makes it simpler to see others.”

Beneath its earlier moniker, the Bitcoin Frontier Fund raised $7 million to assist firms centered on Bitcoin and the Stacks community. The group is backed by Belief Machines, Hiro, the Stacks Basis, and Stacks co-founder Muneeb Ali.

Stacks is a layer-2 blockchain that lets builders create sensible contracts and decentralized purposes on prime of Bitcoin. Rebranding from Stacks Ventures to the Bitcoin Frontier Fund captures simply how a lot Ordinals has modified the dialog surrounding Bitcoin and Web3 in latest months, Owens mentioned.

“Earlier than Ordinals got here alongside, we did not see a approach to construct all these superior property on Bitcoin’s layer-1,” he mentioned, declaring that inscription information is hosted instantly on the community. “It’s the lacking piece of the puzzle for creating property on Bitcoin.”

The Ordinals accelerator program will final 4 months for every firm that’s accepted, and put together them to boost funding. Notable mentors embody OnChain Monkey co-founder Amanda Terry, Mud Labs founder and CEO Kevin Henrikson, the pseudonymous on-chain information fanatic Domo (who created the BRC-20 token commonplace), and Udi Wertheimer of Ordinals undertaking Taproot Wizards.

Wertheimer’s “Nice Ordinals Debate” was an anticipated spat at Bitcoin 2023 in Miami this previous Might—again when Ordinals garnered controversy for clogging Bitcoin’s community and sending transaction charges sky-high resulting from fervor surrounding BRC-20s.

Whereas the pushback Ordinals obtained was palpable, the eye—as a few of Bitcoin’s largest figures like MicroStrategy Government Chairman Michael Saylor affirmed—additionally drove adoption, Owens mentioned.

A latest drop-off in Ordinals-related exercise has led some to take a position that Ordinals are “useless,” the pseudonymous Ordinals technical fellow generally known as Ordinally beforehand instructed Decrypt. But Owens argued a scarcity of buzz is simply pure because the Ordinals area progresses, whereas critics—the so-called laser-eyed Bitcoin maximalists—tuck their tails between their legs.

“There’s at all times an preliminary hype cycle for each new know-how,” he mentioned. “However I hope that folks will begin to acknowledge Ordinals is a paradigm shift [in] how we are able to construct purposes on Bitcoin.”