The ASC-20 token standard on the Avalanche blockchain has garnered significant interest from market participants following the popularity of Bitcoin Ordinals.

Avalanche-based inscriptions appear to be on a similar trajectory to those based on the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol, as trading activity for these assets continues to build up. 

Data from Dune Analytics shows that the total number of inscriptions on the Avalanche blockchain has surpassed 100 million since its launch in June last year. At the time of writing, the most popular inscriptions were the AVAV, DINO and SNOW tokens.

The inscriptions are based on the ASC-20 token standard, and like Bitcoin ordinals, allows users to mint, buy and sell non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as inscriptions. Unlike the BRC-20 token standard’s OP encoding process however, the ASC-20 protocol uses a novel JSON format which allows a wider range of data to be included in transactions at a lower cost.

The protocol also has a mechanism that returns funds to users in the event that a miner is unable to process the transaction at hand. 

“The launch of the ASC-20 token standard has given a huge boost to transaction activity on the Avalanche chain, growing by 2000% in just one week,” noted analysts at crypto exchange Gate.io in a report.

Unsurprisingly, the interest surrounding the new tokens has also caught the attention of bad actors in the space. Last month, Avalanche inscription project Avascriptions alerted the community to a fake token called AVAV1 that was soon to be listed on the MEXC crypto exchange.

“We vehemently oppose MEXC listing such a token, which is prone to confuse users and exhibits fraudulent characteristics. We urge MEXC to address this matter seriously,” wrote the Avascriptions team in an X post. 

“We will not list any ASC-20 inscription token on MEXC until the $AVAV1 project is delisted.”

Earlier this week, however, Avascriptions’ real token AVAV had a successful launch on Bitget, rallying more than 50% since the exchange listing.