The crypto world saw several major developments unfold over the past week, with Bitcoin's ordinals dominating the NFT ecosystem, Toncoin's rise into the top 10 ranks, and an explosion of activity on the Base blockchain. Let's dive in:

Bitcoin Ordinals Outpace Ethereum NFTs

Bitcoin's fledgling Ordinals (on-chain inscribed NFTs) racked up more sales volume last week than the heavyweight NFT ecosystems of Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, and Mythos combined.

Also, the top three most traded NFT collections were all minted on Bitcoin's base layer, according to data from CryptoSlam. For an ecosystem barely crawling a year ago, the Ordinals seem to be catching up with all the other surging activities in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Toncoin ($TON) Enters the Big Leagues

Toncoin ($TON) has taken a remarkable turn. Initially conceived by Telegram's founders in 2018 and raising a staggering $1.7 billion before abandoning the project due to regulatory woes, an open-source community is now driving the blockchain.

Last week Toncoin’s native token recently hit a new all-time high of $7.59, catapulting it into the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap at #9 - just behind Dogecoin's #8 spot.

Toncoin's fundamentals are equally impressive. Daily revenue soared to $125,000 on Monday, marking its second-highest day ever as fees and activity skyrocketed.

More Transactions on the Base Blockchain

The Base Layer 2 ecosystem witnessed a remarkable surge in on-chain activity this past week. Base processed a staggering ~3 million daily transactions every day, nearly double that of the second-highest L2, Arbitrum, which handled 1.6 million transactions on its busiest day.

Ryan Adams, who leads crypto media outfit Bankless, talked up Base’s growth in an X post last week. “The Base chain has made over $40m as an L2 already, paying Ethereum less than $2,500 for that,” he said, driving a contrarian argument that Ethereum, as an L1 chain, is cheap.

Last month, NODO reported Base’s TVL growth nearing $1 billion, driven mostly by DeFI exchange Aerodrome. Today, the chain’s TVL is almost at $1.5 billion, according to DeFiLlama

The 'Bitcoin Sign Guy' Cashes In

Christian Langalis, the infamous "Bitcoin Sign Guy" who, in 2017, photobombed the then-Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen with a sign that read: Buy Bitcoin, is auctioning off his piece of crypto history. The piece has already garnered a private 5 BTC offer (roughly $343,000).

Langalis plans to use the proceeds to fund Tirrel Corp, his pre-seed-stage startup building an implementation and wallet for Bitcoin's layer-2 Lightning network

Image source: Vecteezy