Ordinals Explorer Ord.io Raises $2M Round Led By Bitcoin Frontier Fund

Bitcoin Ordinals explorer Ord.io has closed a $2 million pre-seed round aimed to accelerate the already blossoming Ordinals ecosystem.

The Bitcoin Frontier Fund led the round, which included Sora Ventures, UTXO Management, Balaji Fund, and PetRock Capital, among others.

“We’re positioning ourselves to be able to serve the next generation of Bitcoiners who not only want to hold BTC but also collect JPEGs and trade memecoins,” said LeonidasNFT, co-founder of Ord.io.

Leonidas, the creator of Runestones, which he wants to leverage to build the biggest memecoin community in the world, told The Defiant the funds will be used to develop financial tools that will allow users to take further actions within the Ordinals ecosystem without ever having to leave Ord.io.

Ordinals Boost NFT Markets

Ordinals have exploded since Casey Rodarmor launched the protocol in early 2023, recently leading NFT volumes to a 12-month high.

They can be thought of as equivalent to NFTs, allowing non-financial data, from JPEGS to text to videos, to be inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain. Inscriptions are linked to an individual satoshi, the smallest denomination of a bitcoin.

According to Leonidas, the Ordinals ecosystem is competing with other blockchain ecosystems for mindshare and developers.

“We need the most talented developers in the industry to be excited about coming to build on Bitcoin,” he explained, adding that they have their eyes set on Ethereum’s developer network effects – which he calls the strongest in the industry.

“Bitcoin needs to overtake that in the coming years,” he said.

VCs Bet Big On Ordinals

Venture capital has been pouring into the Ordinals ecosystem.

Taproot Wizards, a project that aims to “bring the magic back to Bitcoin,” raised $7.5 million in November 2023; Ordinals wallet Oyl raised a $3 million pre-seed led by Arthur Hayes, which included multiple Ethereum NFT funds; and in March 2024, OrdinalsBots announced an oversubscribed $3 million seed round to build out the Ordinals data layer.

Leonidas explained that the venture ecosystem was initially slow to recognize the significance of Web3 arriving on Bitcoin, but it is “quickly catching up.”

The builder also expressed his excitement about Bitcoin-native companies that are springing up through the Ordinals ecosystem. “The multi-chain builders have their role to play as well but it is unlikely that they will be the ones going out of their way to uphold Bitcoin’s core values,” he concluded.