The transition to Ordinals, however, can be challenging. High-end artists and collectors face the complexities of navigating a nascent ecosystem, striving to balance the excitement of innovation with the practicalities of security, display, and transactional ease. 

The technical barriers and cost associated with inscribing large, high-resolution pieces onto the Bitcoin blockchain have proven to be significant hurdles, mirroring the experience of many artists during the 2021 NFT boom on Ethereum. For instance, Empress Trash, a digital artist who became one of Gamma’s partner artists in February 2024, had been following the Ordinals market since its inception, but technical challenges kept her from participating in the market at the time.

It was only when Gamma approached her at the end of 2023 that Empress became excited about an art-focused platform on Bitcoin. She loved how easy it was to mint inscriptions on their platform and decided to join Gamma almost a year later.

For Empress, the ecosystem’s rapid growth is partly due to the fact that “BTC has a lot of resources in general because of how much money flows and dominates the crypto market.” But also, she noticed that even though it sometimes moves at a slower pace than other communities, “the leaders in [the ecosystem] seem more thoughtful and deliberate in moves for the culture and ethos.”

But there is another limitation: high transaction fees. When inscribing Ordinals, the larger the image size, the higher the cost. Inscribing a simple 20kb image can cost as much as 435,000 sats. This is a big hurdle for creators who work with high resolution mediums or even video, leading artists like Buba Viedma to highlight the additional challenges Ordinals can bring.

“That's why for some fine art artists, it can still be a risky bet to register an Ordinal for hundreds or even thousands of dollars if they are doing well in other blockchains,” he emphasized. Not only that, but it could also mean that “the prices of the pieces have to increase to recover that initial investment, which also leaves out some collectors.”

Empress Trash initially also felt discouraged to enter the space due to high fees. “It felt like a big risk inscribing and spending $200+ dollars and not knowing if anyone would care about my work or buy it,” she noted. 

However, Gamma’s fresh take on editions — or “prints” as they're known — enables partner artists to create low-cost, recursive editions from a single high-resolution original. This approach feels much less risky to artists like Empress because, like many other creators entering a new market, they sell a number of editions at a lower price to build their reputation and a collector base before raising prices on their work.

Despite these obstacles, the allure of the Ordinals ecosystem lies with its promise of permanence and the opportunity to be part of a growing movement that redefines the boundaries of digital art.