NFTs
Taproot Wizards debuts sale of ‘Quantum Cats’ Bitcoin NFTs hampered by technical issues
The long-awaited sale of a debut collection of “Quantum Cats” Bitcoin inscriptions by the Ordinals Taproot Wizards project was marred by technical issues on Monday, leaving users frustrated and forcing an embarrassing delay.
The planned sale of about 3,000 digital cats, designed to honor a Bitcoin improvement proposal known as OP_CAT, began with a two-hour “whitelisting” window at 5:00 p.m. UTC (noon ET) Monday. , but this had to be postponed until Tuesday due to the problems encountered.
“There has been incredible demand for the cats today, and our servers simply couldn’t handle the amount of people trying to mint,” Taproot Assistants posted on X.
The collection was for sale for 0.1 BTC ($4,300), meaning up to 300 BTC ($12.9 million) could have been raised if each cat was sold.
According to the tweet, about 30% of the cats were minted on Monday. This would be equivalent to almost 1,000 cats, for around 100 BTC ($4.3 million).
It was an inauspicious start for Taproot Wizards, who raised $7.5 million in a seed funding round in Novemberreflecting high hopes for projects focused on the fast-growing area of Ordinals protocol signups, colloquially known as “NFTs on Bitcoin.”
The first item in the Quantum Cats series, a special image known as “Genesis Cat”, sold earlier this month at Sotheby’s auction house for a staggering $254,000.
Udi Wertheimer apologizes
Udi Wertheimer, one of the company’s co-founders, apologized to prospective buyers during a live Spaces session on social media platform X.
“There were some failures,” Wertheimer said. “I know this is not the experience people expected.”
After the two-hour whitelisting period, the plan was to pause minting for an hour before the remaining cats were available for general sale.
Complaints filled the project’s Discord channel on Monday: “This has to be one of the worst mint experiences I’ve ever seen,” wrote one user.
O The Ordinals protocol allows data enrollment in satoshis – the smallest units of bitcoin – effectively creating non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on the Bitcoin network. The protocol debuted in early 2023becoming a controversial issue for the Bitcoin community, with some users saying they are needlessly congesting the network.
See more information: Bitcoin-Based Digital Art Image ‘Genesis Cat’ Sells for $254K at Sotheby’s Auction