At the end of this year, the legendary DOOM will turn 30 years old! The creators of the game specifically made it as easy as possible in order to run it on any machine! The full size of the first part is only 4MB and fits on 4 floppy disks 😅
Fans of the game and enthusiasts for 3 decades tried to outdo each other and launched the game on everything where there is at least some kind of screen and processor.
Today we’ll talk about how the legendary shooter was launched on… the Bitcoin blockchain.
This was achieved thanks to the Taproot soft fork and the Ordinals protocol, which I spoke about in detail in the digests “Charlie and CryptoFactory”, and “CryptoIceberg Peak”.
So what happened. Bitcoin enthusiasts are now uploading NFT-like graffiti* content to the blockchain, including a playable clone of the classic shooter Doom!
Created by Nicolas Carlini, the clone of the game is listed on the Bitcoin blockchain as Inscription 466*. Believe it or not, you can actually play it with a keyboard and mouse. It's a simplified knockoff of Doom, and it's certainly not as cool as the original, but this version gives an idea of what's possible with the Ordinals protocol.
*Graffiti, of course, is not a real term, but I think it fits perfectly, and you can see how it looks right HERE 🤯
Nicholas' idea takes the ever-expanding "It Runs Doom" meme to the next level, the essence of which is that people are trying to make the game work on almost any gadget or device they can find - be it an ATM, a refrigerator, a smart watch and much more . However, I'm repeating myself
There is even a subreddit dedicated to the movement, followed by nearly 100,000 Reddit users.
And now the wave has reached BTC.
Let's repeat the base. Bitcoin is the original decentralized blockchain without the right to access, with the ability to store content in it. Each block holds up to 4MB (in fact, a full-fledged game could fit, but Carlini limited himself to a version of 31.2 KB).
The Ordinals protocol argues that bitcoin “records”, such as a Doom clone, are better than some NFTs, which are unique blockchain tokens (typically Ethereum ERC-721 tokens) denoting ownership of associated metadata, which in many cases are centrally stored off-chain!
As I have already said in the digests, but it will not be superfluous to repeat - each entry to BTC through Ordinals can be regarded as a "digital artifact", since it is itself complete and decentralized. It cannot be changed, unlike most NFTs, whose metadata can be changed or even removed by the creator.
Since its launch in January, Ordinals has already generated a lot of buzz among the bitcoin community, as maximalists, old-schoolers, and other cypherpunks debated whether or not to upload any content to the bitcoin blockchain at all.
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