On Ordinals: Where do you stand?

[larry_vw_1955]

EG if a op code meant to suggest and promise that its witness will only be a 1 signature length that validates against the tx data.. then its allowed. if its just random crap unrelated to the transactions purpose of the payment. then its junk and should be rejected

there's no denying that ordinals has exploded in popularity. everybody is talking about it, including youtubers. that brings more interest to bitcoin. maybe the price goes up. but yeah i guess if you're wanting to get rid of the ordinals "feature" you could technically do it. as you have pointed out how. i guess it's up to the bitcoin devs but i have a feeling that if they tried to do that then there would be an imminent fork of bitcoin.  you could call the new fork bitcoin-ord.

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[pooya87]

If we set a precedent that the protocol needs to change every time someone makes an emotional response to something they personally disapprove of, where does it end?

We first have to determine whether the widespread negative reaction to Ordinals is emotional and personal opinion or if it is because Ordinals is against the very purpose of bitcoin.

It is one thing to complain about for example people still using P2PKH instead of P2WPH and demanding a protocol change for that and complaining about someone using bitcoin aka a payment system for file storage.

[nutildah]

PSA

[Artemis3]

In the meantime, my actual transaction destined to pay bills and food, is still waiting since the 11th. Well there are still days left before the end of the month. But this is clearly showing what it is to come.

sounds like you might have to bump up the fee because i don't see this ordinals activity slowing down any time soon. if anything, more people are going to be releasing 10,000 item collections...and then you still have the mom and pop people like the person that can't stop uploading the bitcoin logo.

they should somehow make it so that people submitting an ordinals transactions have to pay the fee for someone else's normal transaction. that would get you taken care of, buddy.    

No need, it finally confirmed but it took a week instead of the usual couple of hours before this spam. Of course this was simply an experiment which proves what is going on. Maybe i was lucky, hoping certain pool didn't find any blocks...

IMO Ordinals doesn't care as long as they can profit. It is everybody else who is affected from their spam, after all. They are essentially hijacking Bitcoin. but we are yet to see the worst part, when more join the spamming...

[franky1]

"ranking sats" cannot be stopped as they are not spamming blocks
its just some guys numerical counting system
(the old purpose of historic brand "ordinals")

but recent change of brand purpose (the memes)
adding memes to certain tx can be stopped by reducing the room they have been given to put memes into tx witness

no one for a decade cared about ranking sats. ranking sats was not a problem..
its the meme spam thats advertised under the brand "ordinals" which is what people can stop

no single input or output deserves 3.99mb
no single input or output deserves 10kb

[n0nce]

My point was going more into another direction: We can't rely on the hope that nobody would ever insert illegal data in the blockchain. Because as I wrote there are ways to do this without Taproot or Ordinals. And someone who wants to destroy Bitcoin could use whatever method, even those old methods from 2013 requiring fake addresses and a lot of block space.

In my opinion, we should increase the difficulty of some hack like that and not facilitate it. It's as if you had an insecure front door lock, so as a consequence you remove it completely or leave it as is. Instead of upgrading it, when you realize it has always been very insecure.

I'm also sure that one who really wanted to do it could even insert whatever data in a blockchain without any scripting, like Monero (that's also an answer to @n0nce).

Do you have some proof to back this up if you are 'sure' about the possibility?

One simply would use a combination of addresses, transactions and amounts which would encode [...]

You clearly haven't had a glance at Monero yet. There are no addresses, transactions and amounts viewable to the public. So I doubt your above proof ('I am also sure') highly, just from this misinformation alone.

Absolute freedom is a dual-edged sword.

Since when is Bitcoin an absolutely free cloud data storage platform? I thought it was an absolutely free 'peer-to-peer electronic cash system'.

Unfortunately all of the already happen far before Ordinal exist. See these article,
https://www.newsweek.com/bitcoins-blockchain-contains-child-abuse-images-dark-web-links-and-wikileaks-857335
https://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photographs.html#ref14

If something bad has 'been done before', do you think it is a really good justification to keep doing it?

Bitcoin should be good at one thing and one thing only.

I agree. But on technical level it's impossible to ensure Bitcoin only can be used as currency/payment method while remain decentralized/permissionless.

Why is that impossible? Look at Monero, for instance. Or other privacy coins. Since they hide most information, you kind of get 'payments only' as a side effect. 'Modern' cryptography still allows you to verify transactions before mining them / adding them to your node, without knowing everything about them.

Its not helping adoption,

On the contrary, its encouraged some people to run full nodes & several more to care about bitcoin for the first time.

Both mere subjective opinions, without data to back them up.

[d5000]

In my opinion, we should increase the difficulty of some hack like that and not facilitate it.

You're of course partly right, and I've already written that I would support a reduction of the byte limit for data in Taproot. Although I'm still hoping for this fad to wane "on its own", because I'm not sure what functionality you would cripple if you lower that limit.

But regarding illegal data, I'd be much more afraid of a "destructive" attack of a group which uses standard transactions (not technically "standard", as Taproot tx are also standard, but those who look like financial ones) with illegal data, building a protocol around that, just to drive the price of Bitcoin down. A short seller attack, or a government attack. Thus no, we can't rely on nobody doing that ever, with or without ordinals. What we must fight for is for legislation equiparing Bitcoin explicitly with ISPs in this aspect (everybody in his jurisdiction).

Do you have some proof to back [the possibility of storing data on Monero] up if you are 'sure' about the possibility?

There is at least this Reddit thread and this one (see answers from manicminer5 and from BrugelNauszmazcer, which would work even if tx_extra is eliminated, like some developers seem to plan, although it needs a "cooperative" uploader sharing a view key). You're partially right that data on Monero can be stored privately so it's difficult to retrieve for an observer without additional information, but you can broadcast the needed keys in another P2P network (as for this you don't need double spend protection). The "destructive approach" would thus also work there.

(PS: just read tromp's answer in the other thread, so you don't need even another P2P network for the keys. Yes, Grin seems to almost solve that, but it still seems possible even there.)

I'm afraid that no modern cryptography can solve that problem - if somebody is able to read the data, even the uploader himself, then he can make them accessible for others, too, if this is his intent.

[franky1]

In my opinion, we should increase the difficulty of some hack like that and not facilitate it.

You're of course partly right, and I've already written that I would support a reduction of the byte limit for data in Taproot. Although I'm still hoping for this fad to wane "on its own", because I'm not sure what functionality you would cripple if you lower that limit.

basing bitcoin on the ethos of a financial payment system

name one real utility where

a single input or output deserves 3.99mb of bloat
a single input or output deserves 10kb of bloat

[pooya87]

Although I'm still hoping for this fad to wane "on its own", because I'm not sure what functionality you would cripple if you lower that limit.

I can't think of any existing functionality or [useful] utility that would be damaged by such a limit. Besides if there is a need for a bigger limit, it could be raised in a future consensus rule such as a new witness program version.

[larry_vw_1955]

IMO Ordinals doesn't care as long as they can profit. It is everybody else who is affected from their spam, after all. They are essentially hijacking Bitcoin. but we are yet to see the worst part, when more join the spamming...

who would want an nft on ethereum anymore? bitcoin is where it's at. that's the honest truth as far as i'm concerned. so yeah i mean maybe the worst part in terms of fees and network conjestion is yet to come. but remember this whole thing is just a loophole never meant to happen. the fact that it did happen doesn't change that. anyhow...

basing bitcoin on the ethos of a financial payment system

name one real utility where

a single input or output deserves 3.99mb of bloat
a single input or output deserves 10kb of bloat

so tell me something franky, is it really true that if someone sells their bitcoin nft to another person then all that junk data gets duplicated on the blockchain so now there's essentially 2 copies instead of 1? everytime a bitcoin nft gets sold another copy of that same jpeg or whatever content it is gets duplicated. how inefficient!  peoples' hard drives are gonna fill up real fast if that's the case.

[franky1]

so tell me something franky, is it really true that if someone sells their bitcoin nft to another person then all that junk data gets duplicated on the blockchain so now there's essentially 2 copies instead of 1?

separate some concepts

A. meme junk data (ordinal content) / spam
b. NFT

if you can imagine a [better] NFT system as a 256bit hash of a file (not the junk meme itself, but a hash of it)
that 32byte hash(256bit) is then prefixed with a txformat and given a checksum suffix. thus appearing as a public segwit address (pure raw data binary only needs the prefix couple bytes and the 32byte hash)

and then put as position 2 tx output list where position 1 is the real bitcoin address that is using some protocol code locking position 2 to be associated with position1 to allow position 1 to move/spend position 2.

then that would be a NFT system where someone can spend and change ownership of a NFT
however bitcoin does not work like that
because bitcoin was never designed to be an NFT protocol

.....

this ordinal BS is not even a hash of a meme.. its actually putting the meme into a tx that then goes into the blockchain. and because you dont normally copy (due to bitcoin protocol) the signature/witness data from one tx to the next because each TX is unique, you will have to move the meme into each TX to show its current owner.
also it takes up space AGAIN due to lack of using just hashes of a meme instead of full meme data
...
also the nft and meme and ordinal crap dont work as a effective ownership claims on subnetworks without blockchains. because ending its chain of custody/ancestry with one tx output...[shuffling around in a non-blockchain subnetwork via routing] and popping up on a completely different tx onchain.. is not showing the chain of custody/provenance proof of ownership lineage on the main net thus ownership claim is lost on the mainnet due to lack of provenance lineage pathway (taint) on the main net due to use of a subnetwork without a blockchain

so those trying now to take this new highly discussed topic of ordinals to promote a flawed subnetwork that has no blockchain. is just them trying to abuse a discussion to name drop their flawed subnetwork pretending their subnetwork has relevance/purpose. but wont be at all of help even for those that adore such junk or NFT function

everytime a bitcoin nft gets sold another copy of that same jpeg or whatever content it is gets duplicated. how inefficient!   peoples' hard drives are gonna fill up real fast if that's the case.

very inefficient. and i dont see them as true NFT. its just bloat of a tx.
and with the 4mb limit. if that 4mb is filled per block then the blockchain will grow by 210gb a year
comparing to the average 68gb a year (1.3mb blocks) pre ordinal/meme-junk  season

[nutildah]

you will have to move the meme into each TX to show its current owner.
also it takes up space AGAIN due to lack of using just hashes of a meme instead of full meme data

No. This is incorrect. I don't know why you keep repeating this misinformation. I pleaded with you to actually look at a bitcoin transaction where one ordinal (inscribed ordinal) was sent from the minting address to another address. You obviously didn't do it because if you had you would realize that the transaction does not contain the bloated witness data associated with the inscription. This is because it is not necessary for the protocol to function.

The inscribing process only happens once. The inscription is forever associated with the resulting ordinal output, which is tracked by the protocol from owner to owner. It does not need to be "moved" or "recreated" upon each transfer of the ordinal.

Let's pull a new example at random.

This is a Bitcoin Punk for sale on OpenSea via Emblem Vault (an Ethereum wrapper for bitcoin assets):

https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0x82c7a8f707110f5fbb16184a5933e9f78a34c6ab/17050183900261431

Looking at the bottom of the NFT description we see two block explorer links:



Pulling up the BTC Explorer link first we see two transactions. The older transaction is not related to the ordinal, but the newer one is, which is:

https://mempool.space/tx/5bff0c943a04f4320bdc1cd6d55407ce6e952bcb4c2be6866eb159c0c85a3536

(I like to use this explorer b/c it contains detailed info about witness data)

Its a 153 byte transaction from

bc1pme4kpyy7cmzz9gd5f6wdpsxlxk5qqwz3zx8mj7wjrsukcdpljggsxal4xz to
1PUY4ugnZ3oFtke6YU4LqpZeJhUNjyssjM, which is the address that currently holds the inscribed ordinal.

The witness data in this transaction is normal-sized.



Going backward to bc1pme... we see 2 transactions: a send and a receive. Looking at the receive transaction,

https://mempool.space/tx/b7a5cffd28b6c2db37880ac0321b18b4985c2ae4d75584a264d1334320ef532f

we see a much bigger size:



This is because the inscription happened in this transaction.

Putting the above tx ID into the ordinals explorer (+ "i0" per ordinal ID standard) yields the following:

https://ordinals.com/inscription/b7a5cffd28b6c2db37880ac0321b18b4985c2ae4d75584a264d1334320ef532fi0

You can see the ordinals explorer recognizes 1PUY4ugnZ3oFtke6YU4LqpZeJhUNjyssjM as the current owner of the Bitcoin Punk.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the witness data of the minting transaction and first send transaction:



Ergo, the inscription data attached to an ordinal does not need to be re-inscribed upon each transfer.

everytime a bitcoin nft gets sold another copy of that same jpeg or whatever content it is gets duplicated. how inefficient!   peoples' hard drives are gonna fill up real fast if that's the case.

Except that's not what happens regardless of what franky has to say about it. Anyone who is capable of logically following what I demonstrated above will realize this.

[franky1]

@nutilda
i get what casey says about his system
but his system FAILS at being an NFT

im not going to go through all the reasons again. .. actually i think it should. seems you have not got it thus far

to be a successful true NFT with great provenance(chain of custody)
the file or hash of file needs to transfer per user.
so the new owner has content in a tx destined for him with data destinged for him. thus he receives said data. to claim true ownership of it

the blockdata at binary level of the .. lets say grandchild tx.. would contain no binary data, hex data, or human readable data. that shows association to the tx that had the meme in it

emphasis
the grandchild tx would have different txid to the grandfather tx.. due to it having the parent txid in the childs tx

thus the grandchild does not hold the so called ~{NFT}~ they only hold a provenance record. not the actual token/meme itself
its like saying the NFT will forever be held in some ancestor vault. but the record of ownership changes of who can view the gold in the ancestor vault

the bank of england keeps the gold but changes who is the current owner
(it only lasts until the bank of england changes "the gold standard"
where casey(no longer associates the great great great grandchilds ledger to the great great great grandfathers gold vault)


a true NFT would be where the NFT is actually moved.

bitcoin cant do this because bitcoin does not use output hashes as inputs. it uses utxo's of a txid, which change per decendant

thus has to use some lame outside explorer to try to taint them together using provenance viewer

its like
having grandpa hold some gold. and he buried it somewhere.
but then in his Will he said "my son jimmy can have it, if he can find it"
jimmy doesnt find it but uses the Will to say he owns gold
jimmy passes that to his son in his Will

but jimmys son, doesnt have gold in his hands. just a chain of Wills that says he has gold

..
this is why bitcoin when moving coin. doesnt just have txid(utxo) and output(destination)

itinsteadn ahs the value field included and a protocol to destroy a UTXO out of a UTXO set and add the output as a new uxto
where the value is seen per tx as moving.. rather than remaining in the coinbase value field

because the actual moving of value is important to the ownership claim of said value

.. this is why i said for there to be a NFT on bitcoin without bloat. it would require dressing up a hash of file as a output. and move that output with the destined owners output which he sign for where he puts said output(nft hash) beside who he wishes to give ownership to

so that it shows true ownership change

.
caseys separate taint explorer. is just reading of the wills of ancestry. not actually being a property mover

[nutildah]

@frank

you don't get it.

nobody cares about franky1's NFT system. nobody cares about your standards or the way you think NFTs should work. that is irrelevant to this discussion.

we're talking about how the ordinals NFT system actually works, which you clearly don't care to understand because you keep repeating the same misinformed nonsense.

you continue to shift the argument because you can't bear to ever admit - not even once - that you were wrong about something.

a true NFT would be where the NFT is actually moved.

this is meaningless because you have decided yourself as the sole arbiter of not only what an NFT is but how they move. Counterparty has been doing it for years and it doesn't even require the transaction of any bitcoin, other than to pay for tx fees... its all done via protocol that interprets nonstandard data according to a set of rules, which is what ordinals is also doing.

[franky1]

oh your talking about caseys NFT system
and what you are not realising is

i was too. and comparing it to how proper ownership works


i know casey game. and yes im calling it a game
where its vaulted up in some ancestor vault and people just trade claims.. not actually OWN an nft.. though casey and his fanbase want to think its a real NFT thing

yea i get it.
but like i said many many many posts ago and repeated a few times. its not actually owning a property. its just changing registry.

i have said many times to separate your minds of caseys games and caseys words. and actually think about real hard data. and real legal and practical methods of real world ownership

you dont own the gold in your hand because the tx/promissory note you receive contains no property in it.
you are relying on a chain of custody analysis

this same problem occured over a century ago.. gold sits in a bank and doesnt move, but here is a bank note that says you own it
.. and we know how that went
(it only works. until the real vault owner changes the gold standard and keeps the gold)

if your not able to move the gold from your hand to someone elses hand and it remains in a ancestor vault. then you dont own it. because you are not moving it

there is good reason why bitcoin included the value field and not just had public addresses as input ans outputs
there is good reason why part of the verification is to remove utxo(as spent) add in a new utxo as unspent where the value is seen to move per transaction

but i dont think you are grasping these deeper details.

[hopenotlate]

The debate over the Ordinals protocol and its potential impact on Bitcoin bring us back to the old same dylemma, faced in uncountable situations, between the need for innovation and experimentation in the blockchain ecosystem and the importance of preserving the core principles and properties that make Bitcoin valuable and relevant.

Persoally am concerned about the impact of such a feature on the blockchain's security, scalability, and fungibility: Bitcoin was designed to prioritize security and decentralization therefore attaching non-financial data to Bitcoin transactions could make it harder to verify the authenticity and integrity of the blockchain's transaction history, which could ultimately compromise its value as a store of value and medium of exchange.

[nutildah]

Do you still believe this to be true?

and because you dont normally copy (due to bitcoin protocol) the signature/witness data from one tx to the next because each TX is unique, you will have to move the meme into each TX to show its current owner.

[franky1]

Do you still believe this to be true?

and because you dont normally copy (due to bitcoin protocol) the signature/witness data from one tx to the next because each TX is unique, you will have to move the meme into each TX to show its current owner.

firstly witness data does not move to the next tx...

secondly if your not moving the value per tx.. your recipient is not getting the value
they are getting a promise of chain of custody but not the actual property
where that promise only holds if using caseys taint analysis

anyways
do you still believe that if you hand over a bank note to someone without moving the gold out of the national reserve... that you ever owned the gold. and that you moved the gold and gave it to a new owner??
or can you see the trick the national reserve banks done on citizens many decades ago

imagine your transfers you speak of which you think is true solid proven holding and ownership

now imagine there has been 3 transfers down a lineage.
now tell me in that child transaction. show me whats inside the data of THE CHILD transaction

that is (no taint analysis crap stuff your dying to mention) actual identifying of the property

[nutildah]

Don't be a squirrel. Just answer the question.

everytime a bitcoin nft gets sold another copy of that same jpeg or whatever content it is gets duplicated. how inefficient!

very inefficient.

Why didn't you correct him on how the system actually functions?

[franky1]

i did. there are many posts
where i said about it

seems you are just angry that i am showing you how these ordinals are not actual ownerships of the memes YOU BOUGHT and you are suckered into buying something thats not actually transfered to you. but still locked up in caseys vault
where he can later do a protocol change and boom. you own nothing

..
remember
he has told you "stuff in witness of tx. is associated to output 0"
where he sold you small value of output zero for more then that output 0 value

however. nothing in bitcoin associates that witness with output 0
nothing in your child tx contains the actual meme

he could EASILY change his protocol and say.. hmm actually output 1 owns the witness

so again show me the child (receiver) tx. and where in that child receiver TX does it contain any direct info/data of the property(meme)

responding to below
how casey describes things is deceptive.
so no i wont just pander and repeat how he says his system works. i instead look passed the illusion and explain how it really works

EG there is no meme in the "value" data field of a tx where sats sit
although idiots think thats where the meme sits due to reading caseys promotional material

i am not going to pander to caseys wording . because caseys wording is not 'as described' of what actually happens

i hope you did not pay too much more for the sats he sent you. but i guess you need to learn the hard way that you got screwed over

..
take the instant adoration away.
and think of the situation the same as how banks vaulted up gold and handed people promissory notes. and try reading the detail of what the promissory(bank note) actually says and how it does not mention gold or anything on it
where its simply a presumption that if bank has gold and you have paper that it somehow means you own gold.. (but reality is not the same as presumption=ownership)

shouting but this bank note prove i got it from...
is meaningless it does not mean you own gold
there is no gold in your possession, no reference to gold in your possession.

read your TX. is there a ordinal in your TX. no.. then you dont own a ordinal