NFTs in the Bitcoin blockchain - Ordinal Theory

[vjudeu]

(witness 80byte limit) (as the taproot promise seemed to be promoted as reducing witness weight. so enforce that promise)

It can be non-standard, but it cannot be invalid, because it could invalidate currently existing timelocked transactions with too huge witness. Also note that you can use Schnorr signatures and have a single signature only if your sighashes are the same: so if you have 2-of-2 multisig, where you have SIGHASH_ALL in one signature, and SIGHASH_SINGLE|SIGHASH_ANYONECANPAY in another signature, then your proposal will block those use cases, because then you need a separate signature for each kind of sighash.

if block:transaction:witness is over 80bytes reject block

Every single spam transaction can be splitted into multiple spam transactions. Note that people can still use zero satoshi outputs, and put many 80-byte chunks, to generate the same spam, and take even more space, because of transaction format. There are more ways to create spam than you can count, so it is impossible to prevent all of them. If something makes it harder for typical multisig users, and does nothing to stop spam, then it should not be introduced, because the final outcome will be worse than what we have today.

if size(tx) > Xkb reject tx

We already have that check in our standardness rules. Note that this huge NFT transaction is non-standard, because of many reasons. One is non-standard transaction size, another is non-standard transaction fee, and so on.

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[pooya87]

The ordinals experiment has clearly shown that you can't stop non-transfer uses within the existing consensus rules.

We have been stopping them successfully before Taproot by making them non-standard which discourages such spam. Otherwise you could create a scriptpub with an arbitrary input that is a little smaller than 1 MB.

as for other for instances. multisig/p2sh. if needing a 15-of-15 then have 15x80 limit
instead of the lame softrule of "go ahead take 3.98mb, we dont care"

A Schnorr signature is 64 bytes and with the public key it becomes 96 bytes. 80 byte limit is not enough for any type of Taproot witness. You also can't use OP_CHECKMULTISIG in Taproot scripts, OP_CHEKSIGADD is used so the 15-of-15 size is not the same as before needing all 15 keys and signatures.

then stop having the SOFT opcode that allows new formats (non standard) to pass through as default "isvalid"
you know when consensus was softened in mid 2017

go back to hard consensus that doesnt allow soft(non standard) things through

You are wrong. A lot of forward compatible code existed in bitcoin from day one. That is how BIP16 was enabled too. It allows us to remain backward compatible in each soft fork.
Another example is the the simplest OP codes called OP_NOPs that were used in 2 soft-forks to enable OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY (BIP65) and OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY (BIP112).

[ABCbits]

If a majority of nodes reject these transactions, this whole ordinal idiocy goes tits up overnight. This can be done without any changes to consensus rules: set your node to a reasonably s/B fee rate. This would limit the propagation of these transactions in the mempool.

Very unlikely to happen when most node owner don't bother change default setting. Additionally, in past there were proposal to change default relay fee to 0.1 sat/vB for Bitcoin Core.

In general, I'm not too worried. Ethereum has demonstrated that NFTs will move to the next chain down the road when fees get too high for data usage. In general the whole concept of NFTs on chain is dumb, as you need a centralized party to enforce consumption rules. I don't see this fad developing on chains with scarce block size as a consequence.

Generally it's true, although we have to consider few people willing to pay more since Bitcoin is one of most popular cryptocurrency.

[tromp]

The ordinals experiment has clearly shown that you can't stop non-transfer uses within the existing consensus rules.

We have been stopping them successfully before Taproot by making them non-standard which discourages such spam. Otherwise you could create a scriptpub with an arbitrary input that is a little smaller than 1 MB.

Pre-taproot, ordinal NFTs could also have used segwit for similar cost. Being non-standard might discourage them, but cannot stop them as long as they can be submitted directly to a mining pool willing to include them, as is happening with ordinals.
And even pre-segwit, ordinals could have deployed at a 4x higher cost (without the witness discount).

So you're right about being able to discourage them, but wrong about being able to stop them.

[BlackHatCoiner]

[...]

I agree that being non-standard or not isn't the way of stopping spam, but I strongly disagree with messing around with op codes, hardening consensus rules which locks out potentially useful functionalities to get rid of this particular batch of NFT mania, which will overtime find their way in otherwise.

Bitcoin is incentive based, and pro-freedom network. If transaction fee can't discourage a spammer, no thing can.

[d5000]

I'm still reading stuff about it to really be able to form my opinion on the Taproot "inscription" thing (Ordinals itself seem not to have so much to do with the controversy, they're simply an alternative and efficient method to associate a number/name to the digital object/NFT which is stored).

For now I'm not too concerned, but I have some questions maybe someone can answer or point me to links where they're been explained.

The first big question is of course: how much fees do people save with this method, compared to traditional methods (OP_RETURN with multiple transactions, and Segwit inscriptions like Peter Todd's publish-text.py)?

This tweet claims the reduction compared with the "Segwit method" is 15%. Can anybody confirm this? I also think that probably the amount saved could increase with the size of the digital object, is this true?

Second question: I am a bit concerned that these Taproot scripts cannot be pruned (although from my understanding they aren't cluttering the UTXO set as they are published/stored only after the transaction has been spent), while OP_RETURN scripts can. (if wrong maybe someone can point me to the correct understanding).

So, from my perspective, the way to "solve"/"reduce" the possible spam problem would be to try to ensure OP_RETURN to become the cheapest on-chain method to store data again. Maybe the OP_RETURN standard limits could be increased, while the Taproot limits can be decreased at the same time?


PS: Just my personal opinion - Namecoin is much better fitted for the whole NFT stuff. Why don't the Ordinals folks move there? NMC has always been about names and identities, it's blockchain is quite empty and it's even merged mined with BTC.

[tromp]

So, from my perspective, the way to "solve"/"reduce" the possible spam problem would be to try to ensure OP_RETURN to become the cheapest on-chain method to store data again. Maybe the OP_RETURN standard limits could be increased, while the Taproot limits can be decreased at the same time?

That's what developers have been discussing recently on the bitcoin-dev mailing list [1] and in fact they seem to agree that the best course is to remove the OP_RETURN limit (which are part of the standard-ness test, not a consensus tule) altogether [2].

[1] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-February/021387.html

[2] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-February/021438.html

[Wind_FURY]

Yesterday someone decide to create an NFT[1] which has size 3915537 bytes with 0 tx fee[2]. I can't believe pool Luxor (which mine that transaction) would rather mint an NFT rather than earning more Bitcoin from tx fee. They even made tweet about it[3], where the response isn't positive.

[1] https://ordinals.com/inscription/0301e0480b374b32851a9462db29dc19fe830a7f7d7a88b81612b9d42099c0aei0
[2] https://mempool.space/tx/0301e0480b374b32851a9462db29dc19fe830a7f7d7a88b81612b9d42099c0ae
[3] https://twitter.com/LuxorTechTeam/status/1620921129287430144

That's merely signalling for Ordinals/Inscribing/NFTs in the Bitcoin Blockchain because "they" probably think that long term, the success of Ordinals might bring higher demand to use Bitcoin, then therefore higher profit for mining, which will definitely increase the total hashing power, and then also increase the network's security.

The main utility for Ordinals for those haters of Bitcoin Core, and the Bitcoin Core Developers, is they can inscribe dick pics and know that they will be in gmaxwell's node, achow's node, everyone's nodes.

 

[pooya87]

That's merely signalling for Ordinals/Inscribing/NFTs in the Bitcoin Blockchain because "they" probably think that long term, the success of Ordinals might bring higher demand to use Bitcoin, then therefore higher profit for mining, which will definitely increase the total hashing power, and then also increase the network's security.

Cryptokitties and similar garbage didn't bring any kind of real demand for the platforms they were on. I don't see how Ordinals is going to be any different! Not to mention that we already had better ways of creating tokens in sidechains and so far a handful of people even talked about them and the only reason why Ordinals is being discussed is because it is spamming the chain and is a threat to the real demand bitcoin has.

[d5000]

Thanks! Interesting discussion. Seems that many main developers agreed with the limit-removing idea.

An UTXO is still created since Ordinal offer ability to prove and change ownership of NFT/Inscription.

This is an interesting point. OP_RETURN-style inscriptions allow the ownership being transferred entirely without using UTXOs at all for this purpose, because they can use a separate database to store ownership information (and other stuff, of course). Obviously most "ownership-transferring" txes would still create UTXOs but only due to the fact that you need an BTC input for the fees, so they won't probably be cluttering the UTXO set for a long time and be spent eventually in a "financial" transaction.

In the Ordinals implementation you will have always one UTXO "residing" at the current NFT owner, and NFT ownership may be commonly longer than ownership of "normal" fungible Bitcoins, so the cluttering effect will be probably higher.

This would be in fact another argument in favour of making OP_RETURN cheaper than the Ordinals stuff. AFAIK the main problem to achieve this that OP_RETURN has no witness discount, so if this is not changed, Taproot/Ordinal inscriptions will be still cheaper from a certain data limit upwards.

[Wind_FURY]

That's merely signalling for Ordinals/Inscribing/NFTs in the Bitcoin Blockchain because "they" probably think that long term, the success of Ordinals might bring higher demand to use Bitcoin, then therefore higher profit for mining, which will definitely increase the total hashing power, and then also increase the network's security.

Cryptokitties and similar garbage didn't bring any kind of real demand for the platforms they were on. I don't see how Ordinals is going to be any different! Not to mention that we already had better ways of creating tokens in sidechains and so far a handful of people even talked about them and the only reason why Ordinals is being discussed is because it is spamming the chain and is a threat to the real demand bitcoin has.

I believe, from their viewpoint/perspective, there were also other NFT that brought demand, like CryptoPunks or Bored Ape Yacht Club. To play Devil's Advocate, but this is also a fact, the early NFT brought a new kind of market that brought demand for the blockchains they are in.

It could be used as an attack vector on the network, but if you're debating that it will not bring demand, then that's probably going to be proven wrong, it will be a problem.

[pooya87]

I believe, from their viewpoint/perspective, there were also other NFT that brought demand, like CryptoPunks or Bored Ape Yacht Club. To play Devil's Advocate, but this is also a fact, the early NFT brought a new kind of market that brought demand for the blockchains they are in.

But that's not actual demand, that is pretty much like the same thing with a new name or disguise. If you are saying that the garbage being created today is going to lead to more garbage makers coming to bitcoin, then that is not demand and it is exactly the points everyone is raising against Ordinals.

[Wind_FURY]

I believe, from their viewpoint/perspective, there were also other NFT that brought demand, like CryptoPunks or Bored Ape Yacht Club. To play Devil's Advocate, but this is also a fact, the early NFT brought a new kind of market that brought demand for the blockchains they are in.

But that's not actual demand, that is pretty much like the same thing with a new name or disguise. If you are saying that the garbage being created today is going to lead to more garbage makers coming to bitcoin, then that is not demand and it is exactly the points everyone is raising against Ordinals.

I'm not debating if they're "actual demand" or not, but just illustrating the fact that if there's "demand" for Ordinal-NFT, then there's going to be users/developers who would be very happy to be incentivized to provide the supply. As the demand surges, users would be fighting to be first in the "Fee-Wars", surging the fees, mem-pools will be full, and the network will be congested. Big blockers would probably be happy to "seed" the demand as an attack to the network.

[Primese]

Following that link, I discovered 'Crypto Graffiti' in the comments section. They even have a Bitcointalk project page. Not providing a link to the website on purpose. I was shocked that it was filled with pictures of asian infants / children, when I realized it is a BSV page! They link to CSW as the original creator of Bitcoin, to their software that requires top-grade hardware to run a full node and list CoinGeek as a 'Trustworthy source of Bitcoin news' What I'm trying to say: this garbage is what happens when you allow people to store any data on your blockchain. Fucking disgusting.

I checked it out. Where are the "disgusting" pictures? This is completely safe to show my mom and grandma.

I went through the first 3000 pictures (website is really slow for browsing). It's just literal wholesome family photos. Half of the pictures are family photos. The other half are boring vacation photos and food photos. They're just using it like a really boring Instagram or Facebook album.

If there were "disgusting" photos as you suggested, they've been reported and cleaned up a long time ago.

[digaran]

If there were "disgusting" photos as you suggested, they've been reported and cleaned up a long time ago.

So, what you are saying is that they can censor, cleanup whatever they want? That doesn't look good. Having a central authority to dictate what is good and what is not, however the mentioned disgusting pictures exist, they just don't show it aka censor selectively.

[Primese]

If there were "disgusting" photos as you suggested, they've been reported and cleaned up a long time ago.

So, what you are saying is that they can censor, cleanup whatever they want? That doesn't look good. Having a central authority to dictate what is good and what is not, however the mentioned disgusting pictures exist, they just don't show it aka censor selectively.

There is no central authority for Bitcoin.

That's just one front-end. You're free to build your own node and keep everything uncensored as long as you don't care about operating illegally within your legal jurisdiction. Most websites like this one will have a reporting tool for removing illegal material. It's completely impractical not to have one unless you live in one of the few countries that allow any media content.

The blockchain as a whole operates without jurisdiction, but not individual node operators.

If you want to show Ordinal inscriptions, then do it. If you want to prune the witness signatures, then do it. That's the beauty of being able to choose how to run your node.

[n0nce]

If there were "disgusting" photos as you suggested, they've been reported and cleaned up a long time ago.

How do you envision node operators 'cleaning up' the blockchain? 51% attacks and reorganizing blocks? You must be delusional. This is a proof-of-work blockchain. There is no moderation except consensus rules.

What was shown to me (not 'disgusting' per se, but off-putting & quickly making me realize it is the BSV blockchain, immediately closing the webpage and clearing all caches) was almost 2 weeks ago. This blockchain is so full of spam that you probably see completely different stuff every day. Furthermore, it is definitely possible that this frontend is doing some filtering. Doesn't change the fact that the BSV blockchain does contain horrible stuff that you cannot delete and will have to store, if you want to run a full BSV node. I don't want this happening to Bitcoin.

[BlackHatCoiner]

The legal concern that arises is: what happens if the Bitcoin blockchain is filled up with illegal stuff (e.g., child porn), like in the BSV blockchain? Sharing the blockchain with any node requests it is no different to seeding a torrent (well, not a lot different at least). But seeding an illegal torrent holds you accountable. And you can't decide to not share a part of the blockchain, because nodes need all of it to firstly make sure they have the correct state.

[BenCodie]

The legal concern that arises is: what happens if the Bitcoin blockchain is filled up with illegal stuff (e.g., child porn), like in the BSV blockchain? Sharing the blockchain with any node requests it is no different to seeding a torrent (well, not a lot different at least). But seeding an illegal torrent holds you accountable. And you can't decide to not share a part of the blockchain, because nodes need all of it to firstly make sure they have the correct state.

This is a very valid point and this in itself could be a major driver that leads to the censorship of Bitcoin globally once bad actors begin to utilize ordinal inscriptions for this purpose.

I feel that Ordinals were a big mistake. I see the point in NFTs on chains like Ethereum, where the media isn't actually written to the chain but rather the rights to it are. Ordinals written directly on-chain on the other hand seems like it has not been thought through and potentially could be a huge shot in the foot for BTC.

I would love to read more about there being any fail-safes for this kind of scenario. I doubt there are though.

[BlackHatCoiner]

This is a very valid point and this in itself could be a major driver that leads to the censorship of Bitcoin globally once bad actors begin to utilize ordinal inscriptions for this purpose.

No, I don't think so. Bitcoin has been subjected as money laundering tool, criminal money, ponzi / pyramid / whatever, etc., and against all odds it's more powerful than ever. Banning Bitcoin doesn't even pass the laugh test anymore. Secondly, you could always store illegal content on-chain, Ordinals could always be implemented. It isn't a brand new feature.

I feel that Ordinals were a big mistake. I see the point in NFTs on chains like Ethereum, where the media isn't actually written to the chain but rather the rights to it are.

Rights according to the community. There's absolutely no legislation that treats hashes of images of rocks as property. Also, whatever bad happens to Ethereum, we know they'll tackle it with a hard fork. It is not censorship resistant.