Bitcoin is booming and so are network fees. As investors cheer Bitcoin’s recent surge above $44,000, its highest in 20 months, increased network congestion is sparking another fight over Ordinals projects like NFTs and BRC-20 tokens.
Ordinaries are still in the storm over what should and should not be allowed on the Bitcoin blockchain. On Wednesday, Bitcoin Core developer and Ocean Mining CTO Luke Dashjr criticized Ordinals’ inscription and its impact on the Bitcoin network.
“‘Inscriptions’ are exploiting a vulnerability in Bitcoin Core to spam the blockchain,” Dashjr wrote on Twitter, adding that Bitcoin Core allows users to limit the size of additional transaction data. “By obfuscating the data into program code, Inscription circumvents this limitation.”
PSA: “Inscriptions” is exploiting the following vulnerabilities: #Bitcoin The core of blockchain spam. Since 2013, Bitcoin Core has allowed users to set limits on the size of additional data (‘-datacarriersize’) in transactions they relay or mine. By obfuscating data with program code…
— Luke Dashjr (@LukeDashjr) December 6, 2023
First released by fellow Bitcoin Core developers Casey Rodamer In January, NFT-like ordinal inscriptions are digital assets inscribed in Satoshi, the smallest denomination of Bitcoin. Thanks to the Taproot upgrade launched on the Bitcoin network in November 2021, it is now possible to engrave individual satoshis with media such as works of art and videos.
However, the popularity of the inscription also increased the cost of sending Bitcoin transactions, as demand for block space immediately surged, Hansen explained. Detractors point to these increased costs as another reason to discontinue the protocol.
“The high fees for these transactions mean that if someone tries to send a transaction, it gets confirmed immediately,” said Luxor Technology founder and CEO. Nick Hansen said decryption. “It’s going to cost more, and if you’re not willing to pay the extra cost, it’s going to take longer.”
Hansen admits that he does not follow the NFT space closely, but sees Ordinals as a good use of Bitcoin block space, not just a source of congestion as their detractors claim.
“I am an active user of block space, and right now Ordinals seemed like a very good way to get block space utilization, as this is very important to my customers who are miners,” Hansen said.
More than 46 million such inscriptions have been created since January, including those related to BRC-20, a type of fungible token issued on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Demonstrating the continued popularity of the Ordinals inscription, ORDI, the Ordinals BRC-20 token, hit a new high of $68.37 on Wednesday. ORDI’s current market cap is $1.3 billion. ORDI’s market capitalization on Sunday was $873 million, according to CoinGecko.
BRC-20 is another Ordinals protocol that allows users to mint and transfer tokens of their choice over the Bitcoin blockchain, resulting in the spread of meme coins on the network.
However, detractors called for Ordinals to be blocked, calling it a misuse of the Bitcoin network. Dashjr previously suggested that Bitcoin developers implement “spam filtering” to block Ordinals transactions.
“You can’t stop them” Well! Bitcoin was designed to resist censorship. That doesn’t stop us from lightly commenting on the sheer waste and stupidity of encoding. At least do something efficient. Otherwise it’s another evidence that block space has been consumed.
— Adam Baek (@adam3us) January 29, 2023
“Action should have been taken months ago,” Dashjr wrote at the time. “Spam filtering has been a standard part of Bitcoin Core since day one.”
In 2011, Dashjr released the Bitcoin Knot protocol, a version of Bitcoin Core that allows transactions to be modified to exclude non-financial transactions and additional data such as inscriptions. At the same time, blocks may not be modified to prevent network forks.
Bitcoin Knots is maintained by Dashjr, who suggested on Twitter that the next version of the protocol would help push Ordinals off the Bitcoin network.
“This bug was recently fixed in Bitcoin Knots v25.1,” Dashjr wrote. “Bitcoin Core remains vulnerable even in the upcoming v26 release. “I just hope it’s finally resolved before v27 next year.”
Dashjr has not responded yet. detoxification Request for comment.
Dashjr may view Ordinal as “spam,” but Bitcoin miners and their supporters see the practice as beneficial to the financial stability of the network, refuting claims that Ordinal inscriptions are bad for the blockchain.
“The issue with how (Dashjr) describes (the inscription) as spam is his opinion,” Hansen said. “He might think this additional data isn’t interesting, important, or valuable. But that’s not the case. I mean, everyone is.”
“Luke is not the arbiter of what is considered spam and what is considered valid quote-unquote transactions,” Hansen continued. “My criticism of his approach, or at least the way he describes these types of transactions as spam… is that he is arbitrarily applying what he considers spam. Because that’s what he’s not interested in or wants. “I do not approve.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.