Taproot Wizards, the Bitcoin ordinals startup, has appointed Rijndael, a pseudonymous developer, as its Chief Technology Officer, following the announcement of a $7.5 million funding round led by Standard Crypto last week.
Founded by Udi Wertheimer and Eric Wall, Taproot Wizards is an innovative generative art collection that incorporates Bitcoin ordinals. Bitcoin ordinals represent a recent addition to the network, enabling data to be inscribed as NFTs and other digital collectibles.
In November, Bitcoin ordinals experienced a significant surge in popularity, resulting in nearly $30 million in transaction fees since November 4th, according to Blockworks Research. This surge in demand for blockspace due to ordinals has led to Bitcoin transaction fees surpassing those of Ethereum for the first time in three years.
Prior to joining Taproot Wizards, Rijndael has a background as the technical lead at Amazon's NFT project and, more recently, worked on Bitkey's self-custody wallet.
In a thread on X announcing the career transition, Rijndael expressed concern about the challenge faced by "less dogmatic Bitcoin enthusiasts" in participating in the Bitcoin community without adopting a specific set of rigid principles.
Rijndael stated, "The Ordinals ecosystem presents a genuine chance to broaden the scope of what we consider Bitcoin culture and provide various individuals with an opportunity to engage with a version of Bitcoin that resonates with them."
The new Chief Technology Officer also mentioned the intention to recruit a full-stack engineer.
Taproot Wizards intends to create 2,121 NFTs, each featuring variations of a Microsoft Paint drawing of a wizard that was originally shared on Reddit to promote Bitcoin a decade ago.
Generative NFT projects like Taproot Wizards have been some of the most prosperous endeavors in the crypto space thus far. According to CryptoSlam, Bored Apes and CryptoPunks rank as the second and third highest-selling NFT collections ever, both residing on the Ethereum blockchain.
