Luxor mines largest Bitcoin block ever, contains Taproot Wizard NFT

Bitcoin mining company Luxor mined the largest ever Bitcoin block on Feb. 1 in order to promote what seems to be a potential NFT collection.

The block contained an NFT based on the original “magic internet money” meme but featuring the name Taproot Wizards. The block was 3.96 MB in size, just shy of Bitcoin’s 4 MB limit, and the NFT cost $209 in transaction fees (although potentially just paid to itself). 

The NFT took advantage of the same discount used by NFT project Ordinals when placing extra text in the Bitcoin blockchain — something that was mostly introduced by Segwit in 2017 (but has been largely associated with Taproot due to a widely read blog post on the topic).

“Behold, the Taproot Wizard, untethered and freed from his bondage!” said Luxor on Twitter. “He refuses to be censored, he refuses to be silenced.”

The NFT comes amidst a debate in the Bitcoin community over whether these NFTs are a reasonable use of the blockchain, or if they are spam and should be discouraged, or even eliminated. Luxor appears to be making the case that these belong on Bitcoin.

Udi’s brainchild?

Digging into the project a bit more, it seems to be some sort of a collaboration between the mining company and well-known crypto developer Udi Wertheimer. A dedicated Discord server has been set up for the project where Wertheimer outlined the dilemma facing the community.

“Will you join the Keepers and try to revive the Curse? Or will you join the Taproot Wizards and storm the Gates?” he said in the server.

Wertheimer added that the project’s followers should stay tuned with updates to be posted in the Discord server — suggesting this may not be a one-off. On Twitter, he tweeted the NFT transaction and said, “we do a lil magic.”

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.