Bitcoin Ordinals Mint for Quantum Cats Delayed Again—What’s Going On?

The highly anticipated collection from Bitcoin Ordinals startup Taproot Wizards was initially meant to drop on January 30, but technical difficulties led to the event being pushed back to February 1.

Today, Taproot Wizards says the “unique minting experience” isn’t quite ready.

“We tried to build a custom, unique minting experience that solves issues like fee/gas wars, mempool sniping, et cetera, and gives everyone an instant guaranteed mint,” Taproot Wizards CEO Udi Wertheimer said. “It was new and innovative, but needless to say, it did not work out as well as we expected.

“We’re delaying the mint to Thursday to ensure we can fix it and test it even more thoroughly,” he concluded. “It’s gonna be purrrrrfect!”

Issues with the Quantum Cats Mint website caused the site to crash on Monday during the first attempt. The issues with the website came after 1,000 Quantum Cats inscriptions were minted successfully, Wertheimer said. However, the technical issues persisted, leading to the February 1 reschedule.

“We all underestimated the demand from the Quantum Cats community, and on Monday, the mint website simply didn’t perform as well as it should have,” they said. “Ultimately, that’s our responsibility, and we should’ve done a better job getting this right the first time.”

While most responses were supportive, a few questioned how a well-funded project could flounder.

A spokesperson for Taproot Wizards declined to comment further on the matter.

Quantum Cats is a collection of 3,333 images inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain. The project, Taproot Wizards said, cost over $66,000 to create. The Quantum Cats mint was created in collaboration with OrdinalHub/Luxor, which is known for creating mint experiences, including for Yuga Labs and DeGods.

Taproot Wizards said it worked with Luxor around the clock to resolve the issues encountered on Monday.

“Our first priority is safety and fairness for our community, so we decided to postpone the mint again to test this as thoroughly as possible and to give you all the experience that you deserve,” Taproot Wizards said.

Claiming to have found and fixed the issues that caused the initial delay, Taproot Wizards now says the Quantum Cats mint would begin again on February 5 due to insufficient time for extensive testing to ensure there were no additional bugs in time for the would emerge on the February 1 mint day.

“I know that this is disappointing, but hey, we’ve all been waiting for the first Taproot Wizards drop for a full year,” he wrote. “If it takes just a few more days to give you guys the experience you deserve, I think it’s worth it!”

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.