Binance is winding down support for Bitcoin nonfungible tokens (NFTs) just a few months after introducing it to its marketplace. 

In a blog post on April 4, Binance announced efforts “to streamline product offerings” on the Binance NFT marketplace. As part of these efforts, the exchange’s marketplace is ceasing support for trades and deposits of Bitcoin Ordinals on April 18.

“Users are advised to withdraw their Bitcoin NFTs from the Binance NFT Marketplace via the Bitcoin network before 2024-05-18 00:00 (UTC).”

In addition, the Binance NFT marketplace will cease to offer airdrops, benefits, and utilities related to Bitcoin NFTs after April 10, 2024.

Bitcoin Ordinals, also known as Bitcoin NFTs, allow for the inscription of digital content like art, text, or video directly onto the Bitcoin blockchain. Data embedding has been part of the Bitcoin protocol for some time, but its popularity increased with the advent of Ordinals in late 2022. This protocol, created by Casey Rodarmor, allows unique digital arts to be directly embedded into Bitcoin transactions, similar to Ethereum’s nonfungible tokens (NFTs).

Binance specifically noted that users of Runestone NFT who meet the conditions for the airdrop are advised to withdraw their tokens by April 10.

“Users are advised to withdraw these NFTs by 2024-04-10 10:00 (UTC), to ensure they still have the opportunity to receive any associated tokens, utilities, and benefits after 2024-04-10,” reads the blog post.

The decision came as a surprise to the community. Binance added support to Bitcoin NFTs just a year ago, in May 2023, extending its ecosystem to the Bitcoin network and promising more opportunities to collectors.

The high volume of NFT transactions has clogged the Bitcoin network several times since its inception, increasing fees and slowing processing times as more transactions are validated on-chain.

According to data from Dune Analytics, the network has over 64 million inscriptions to date, and generated over $423 million in transaction fees.