Ninjalerts, an NFT analysis platform that combines 1990s gaming nostalgia and blockchain technology, is launching a Super Nintendo Entertainment System emulator. bitcoin BTC
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Network — Allows users to play games in their browser from the Ordinals Explorer and Marketplace.
The move is part of the “Pizza Ninjas” profile picture NFT project. According to the statement, Ninjalerts also provides tools and instructions for uploading permanent, functional video games to Bitcoin and explains how to store read-only memory game files on Bitcoin in an encrypted and password-protected format.
Ninjalerts said the initiative, in partnership with the Software Preservation Network, was inspired by a study of commercial availability last year by the Video Game History Foundation, which found that 87 percent of classic video games released in the U.S. are “critically extinct.” He said he had discovered that “we are in crisis.”
Regarding copyright law compliance, Ninjalerts states, “United States copyright law, specifically Section 117 of the Copyright Act, permits owners of lawful copies of computer programs (including video games) to make backup copies for archival purposes.”
“Ninjalerts encourages users to utilize these tools for video game preservation, including creating personal backups of games they own, and to find legal ways to avoid any activity that could be considered copyright infringement,” he added.
Nintendo did not respond to The Block’s request for comment.
How the Bitcoin SNES Emulator Works
The Pizza Ninjas project will be launched with a SNES emulator built into each Ninja profile picture NFT, allowing users to play the game in their browser from any Ordinals explorer or marketplace by loading the ROM on their computer or an existing inscription in Bitcoin.
Because the emulator files exist independently of Bitcoin, they have broad applications beyond the Pizza Ninjas project, Ninjalerts said. It combines advanced features of the Bitcoin Ordinals architecture with technologies such as WebAssembly and JavaScript.
Demos of the Super Nintendo emulator can be found on YouTube.
However, users looking to upload more advanced games to Bitcoin will probably be disappointed. “A 16-bit system like SNES is probably the largest system you can actually use from a file size perspective to fully bring older video games and software emulation to Bitcoin,” said Ninjalerts CEO Trevor Owens.
The average cost per kilobyte of data stored in Bitcoin was $44 in December and $19 in November, according to blockchain explorer Blockchair. That cost could be significant, as the SNES is nearly 10MB in size, but Ninjalerts hasn’t confirmed the exact amount.
Despite the cost, Ninjalerts said leveraging the Bitcoin network has the best chance of preserving valuable and culturally significant data. “With approximately 52,766 Bitcoin nodes in operation as of January 5, the Bitcoin network is unrivaled in terms of long-term archival storage capacity,” he added.
Pizza Ninjas will be issuing profile photo NFTs on January 16th through the Magic Eden marketplace platform.
The ongoing debate about how Bitcoin should be used
The growing popularity of Ordinals on Bitcoin last year sparked a debate about whether inscriptions representing things like NFTs and BRC-20 tokens should exist on Bitcoin. Inscription uses Bitcoin’s OP_RETURN function, which is used to store random data on the blockchain.
Just yesterday, an anonymous wallet spent almost 1.5 BTC ($66,000). 9MB of encrypted data On the Bitcoin blockchain. No one has yet claimed ownership of the inscription.
Although the terms “ordinal” and “inscription” are often used interchangeably, an ordinal is technically a unique serial identifier for a single satoshi, while an inscription is the content or data attached to that specific satoshi.
Some argue that these factors are an unintended consequence of Bitcoin’s 2017 SegWit and 2021 Taproot upgrades that make inscriptions more economically feasible and should be removed from Bitcoin. Others argue that such unconventional uses are an essential part of any upgrade and that their use should continue as long as users follow Bitcoin’s rules.
Inscription’s popularity has led to a surge in transactions on Bitcoin and other blockchains over the past year, with a concurrent increase in the share of Bitcoin miners’ revenue from transaction fees compared to block reward subsidies.
However, this activity has led to congestion and increased fees, with Bitcoin users having to pay higher fees and experiencing delays in processing transactions.
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