Understanding Bitcoin NFTs
Bitcoin, as the pioneering blockchain technology, had its early encounters with non-fungible tokens (NFTs) before operational smart contract capabilities were available on the network.
Even before the term “NFT” gained popularity, digital collectibles, primarily cards, were tokenized and shared through Counterparty, a protocol built on the Bitcoin blockchain for recording Bitcoin-related data.
Bitcoin’s Core Protocol
Despite NFTs appearing in the Bitcoin ecosystem, the legacy network has mainly remained disconnected from the thriving NFT projects, platforms, and marketplaces.
The primary reason is the difficulty deploying smart contracts on Bitcoin’s core protocol.
Expanding Smart Contract Functionality on Bitcoin
Bitcoin underwent an evolution with the Taproot upgrade, which introduced new features and functionalities to the network.
However, it did not enable developers to deploy complex smart contracts directly on the main Bitcoin chain.
Stacks aims to address this limitation by offering fully expressive smart contract functionality while settling all transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.