The team behind Bitcoin Ordinals, led by Casey Rodarmor, has recently announced the creation of a nonprofit organization to bolster the protocol's growth and support its core developers.
The newly-created nonprofit, Open Ordinals Institute, will receive donations in Bitcoin to support Ordinals core developers, including the project's newly-appointed lead maintainer known by the pseudonym ‘Raph.’
According to Raph, shifting toward a nonprofit structure will have some tax implications. He said the Institute can accept tax-deductible donations upon approval from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Previously, funding for the development team came from Rodarmor and Raph and was classified as personal gifts for tax purposes.
Donations to support the Ordinals core developers and the Open Ordinals Institute will be made through Ordinals.org. The website will also share community updates and resources related to the protocol's development.
Raph highlighted the significance of moving to the nonprofit structure, saying it will increase neutrality in distributing funds and eliminate the profit incentive.
"It's very great to scale this up and make a long-term effort," "Nonprofits [...] can accept donations and can allocate capital to people contributing in a very neutral way, without there being a profit incentive," he said.
Developed by Rodarmor in January 2023, the Ordinals protocol allows individuals to generate NFTs by assigning data to individual satoshi — equivalent to 100,000,000 of one bitcoin — whether these are images, audio, or videos. This method is achieved through a process called "inscribing." Since its inception, Ordinals have grown significantly as users continue to upload different content to their satoshi. According to the Dune Analytics dashboard, total Ordinal inscriptions have exceeded 21 million.
Meanwhile, the launch of the Open Ordinals Institute highlights the Ordinals team's commitment to growing the newly-discovered utility of the Bitcoin protocol while maintaining neutrality in the process.
