On Ordinals: Where do you stand?

[DooMAD]

• OP_RETURN size more than 80 bytes are rejected as non-standard --> bitcoin is permissionless
• More than one OP_RETURN is rejected as non-standard --> bitcoin is permissionless
• pubscript that isn't P2PKH,P2SH,P2WPKH,P2WSH,P2TR are rejected as non-standard --> bitcoin is permissionless
• scriptsig containing extra items (ie garbage) pushed to the stack is rejected as non-standard -- > bitcoin is permissionless
• for years if the OP_CHECKMULTISIG(VERIFY) dummy item were garbage data other than OP_0 the transaction would have been rejected as non-standard --> bitcoin is permissionless
• OP_(NOT)IF conditional not being OP_0/OP_1 and if garbage data were injected instead the tx would have been rejected as non-standard --> bitcoin is permissionless
• Tx with script containing OP_NOPs is rejected as non-standard --> bitcoin is permissionless
• Tx containing OP_SUCCESS, different witness program, Taproot version, etc. rejected as non-standard --> bitcoin is permissionless
• complicated redeem scripts with bigger sizes (eg. containing a bunch of conditionals) is rejected --> bitcoin is permissionless
• ...

if we decide to reject Taproot witness containing garbage --> bitcoin's permissionlessness is at risk!!!!!!!!

What kind of logic is that?

You raise a fair point.  I'm not aware of the specifics for why each of those limits exists in Bitcoin, but I'd maintain there's still a difference between "these are the limits we currently have" and "I don't personally approve of what someone else is doing, so we should change Bitcoin to impose new limits".

What I'm hearing at the moment is essentially "let's grab the pitchforks and torches because I disagree".  I appreciate there's a balance to be struck and that being permissionless isn't more important than other fundamental aspects in Bitcoin.  But I find the sudden formation of lynch mobs is just a little concerning when we haven't yet established just how serious the perceived problem really is.

It all seems a little reactionary, is all. 

[ABCbits]

remember the promise "taproot witnesses will be lean and appear like 1 signature length"

CMIIW, but that only applies to aggregating multiple signature into single (also called schnorr signature).

--snip--

You raise a fair point.  I'm not aware of the specifics for why each of those limits exists in Bitcoin, but I'd maintain there's still a difference between "these are the limits we currently have" and "I don't personally approve of what someone else is doing, so we should change Bitcoin to impose new limits".

But take note some of the limitation is categorized as limitation imposed by node. Some of those could be ignored by miner and those who can give non-standard transaction to miner.

[Bitcoiner317]

Time will tell in my opinion. It’s a slippery slope for sure. I wish this wouldn’t have been possible without a hard fork, because now most people will probably just go with it. I am against NFTs on mainchain, that’s for sure. But for now, fees remain unaffected and block size has risen only to the recent hype of ordinals. One can hope for the fad to pass and bloat to be released. IMO, blocks should remain as lean as possible. But the possibility to add more data to the chain could open new possibilities for feature on second layers.

Sadly, I feel like this one is out of our hands and onto the miners’. As much as I’d love to downgrade my node to a pre-taproot version, I doubt the miners would because of how it helps filling blocks and rendering more profit.

[NotATether]

Time will tell in my opinion. It’s a slippery slope for sure. I wish this wouldn’t have been possible without a hard fork, because now most people will probably just go with it. I am against NFTs on mainchain, that’s for sure. But for now, fees remain unaffected and block size has risen only to the recent hype of ordinals. One can hope for the fad to pass and bloat to be released. IMO, blocks should remain as lean as possible. But the possibility to add more date to the chain could open new possibilities for feature on second layers.

It would've been better if this was built on some Layer 2 protocol, but now that the gates to L1 have already been opened, we will just have to put up with it.

I don't think its about censorship, but some of the suggestions made by franky1 make sense, stricter rules to ensure its bitcoin transactions and not bloat. This needs to be done before its too late...

Sure miners might enjoy the high fees, or even those interested in promoting parallel blockchains... Unfortunately this comes to the expense of nodes and actual bitcoin transactions.

Note that already half of the network is being polluted with this bloat. Now its a race of pushing down the transactions not belonging to whales. High priced NFTs are willing to pay the high fees a mundane transaction wouldn't. Who benefits more from this sabotage to Bitcoin?

I wonder how are these ordinals being created anyway? Like is there a special software that will mint some arbitrary (image) data but with dedicated addresses for this purpose?

[pooya87]

remember the promise "taproot witnesses will be lean and appear like 1 signature length"

You are confusing Taproot with Schnorr digital signature algorithm. Introducing ECSDSA added the ability to aggregate pubkeys and signatures. Taproot is the script that uses this new DSA and offers more capabilities.

it worked from 2009-2016 where it required nodes to upgrade to contain new rulesets that it would follow before allowing the new rules set formats be allowed to activate..

That has not changed.

[franky1]

It would've been better if this was built on some Layer 2 protocol, but now that the gates to L1 have already been opened, we will just have to put up with it.

the thing about gates. they swing open. and can be swung closed again
hardening consensus to treat such "gates" as limited to x byte lengths per entry is possible. its even possible without needing to re-org existing data. thus only having a couple months of existing bloat. and then closing the gates to only allow entry of slim entrants again

I don't think its about censorship, but some of the suggestions made by franky1 make sense, stricter rules to ensure its bitcoin transactions and not bloat. This needs to be done before its too late...

Sure miners might enjoy the high fees, or even those interested in promoting parallel blockchains... Unfortunately this comes to the expense of nodes and actual bitcoin transactions.

Note that already half of the network is being polluted with this bloat. Now its a race of pushing down the transactions not belonging to whales. High priced NFTs are willing to pay the high fees a mundane transaction wouldn't. Who benefits more from this sabotage to Bitcoin?

I wonder how are these ordinals being created anyway? Like is there a special software that will mint some arbitrary (image) data but with dedicated addresses for this purpose?

they are allowed in due to consensus softened opcodes
EG repurposing the old "anyonecanspend" opcode(op_0) in 2016-7 to be treated instead as a "default:isvalid" that allows anything to be pushed through unverified by treated as valid without checks
then a sub class of opcodes under that one. which is new list of sub opcodes to let in another subclass many newer opcodes that do X, Y,Z and one that is treated as again as default:isvalid to let in a third tier of opcodes
but some of these opcodes in first, second and third tier are without even a byte limit. thus allowing any length through

it worked from 2009-2016 where it required nodes to upgrade to contain new rulesets that it would follow before allowing the new rules set formats be allowed to activate..

That has not changed.

the treatment of what to do with data after op_0 had changed. please do research on the changes that occured and activated august 2017


[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

[Artemis3]

So this is one week of mempool:



Thanks Ordinals and others from profiting on volunteer run nodes...

[nullama]

So this is one week of mempool:



Thanks Ordinals and others from profiting on volunteer run nodes...

Can you explain how this works?, I don't get how "Ordinals and others" are making any money.

[larry_vw_1955]

i wonder when the first video will appear. that will be a truly decentralized version of youtube for sure.  but no monetization just the user paying to upload. but it can't be deleted. so there's that.

[franky1]

i wonder when the first video will appear. that will be a truly decentralized version of youtube for sure.   but no monetization just the user paying to upload. but it can't be deleted. so there's that.

anything can be added to the taproot mechanism of allowing upto 3.9mb of weight
ordinals(currently flat images) is just the first small minded bloat thats being promoted by a team in sanfransisco organising that project of this latest bloat scheme

(anything can be added to the segwit version but that was (forgive memory its been a while) limited to 10kb)
(anything can be added to the op_return version but that was limited to 80bytes)

..
oh and the ordinal adorers do get paid. just not how you think

main ordinal project manager
Casey Rodarmor (a company head of layer1(company brand) until it got into some legal crap about looting the company for personal gain)
(funded by DCG)

DCG sponsors most of the core devs with merge capability(via subsidiaries and shells.. like blockstream, chaincodelabs,brinks)

and all the sworded history of the NYA agreement(DCG+blockstream)..
you soon see all the ties over the years loop around in knots

podcast interview of casey feb 1st as one point of interest of hearing his thoughts on his motives (first 11 minutes are boring intro and talking about fiat/markets.. so yea skip that crap) 11minutes onward:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/casey-rodarmor-on-ordinals-inscriptions-bitcoin-nfts/id1618973677?i=1000597831237

edit listening to the first 25mins (11min-24min) he is actually saying things certain idiots in this topic need to learn.. and it is what i have been saying all along..

so while those idiots are defending ordinals. they need to listen to the technical stuff even THEIR idol is saying(maybe hearing it from their idol is the only way they will be willing to learn)

note: he does make a few misconceptions.
Eg because a ordinal is put into a input witness. its "spent" meaning its not in a output(tx destination). so trying to transfer it via using a utxo(output destination of parent) does not mean you can transfer the ordinal in a childtx)..
Unless you add a copy of an ordinal into the next tx(more data/copies of same data). meaning its not locking ordinal to a value/key that transfers.
its just copy and pasting dead data not locked to a key/ownership

also about his mentions of blocks meant to be full. he shys away about the filling a 4mb of transactions. and just says "data" because reality is the cludge of making the 4mb blockspace does not allow full use of 4mb of transaction data.

[Wind_FURY]

i wonder when the first video will appear. that will be a truly decentralized version of youtube for sure.  but no monetization just the user paying to upload. but it can't be deleted. so there's that.

It's not going to be a decentralized version of YouTube, there would be no use for inefficiency by using the blockchain unless the information inscripted is something that requires censorship-resistance. Why put it in the blockchain? Just because?

But while we talk about that, debating about if/for/else, someone inscribed an audio file of a fart in the blockchain, https://ordinals.com/inscription/5e92195849607b400d77f01cb1146563ce523fed47f66a044e7a470016e05e59i0

There's a fart in the blockchain.

[franky1]

i wonder when the first video will appear. that will be a truly decentralized version of youtube for sure.   but no monetization just the user paying to upload. but it can't be deleted. so there's that.

It's not going to be a decentralized version of YouTube, there would be no use for inefficiency by using the blockchain unless the information inscripted is something that requires censorship-resistance. Why put it in the blockchain? Just because?

But while we talk about that, debating about if/for/else, someone inscribed an audio file of a fart in the blockchain, https://ordinals.com/inscription/5e92195849607b400d77f01cb1146563ce523fed47f66a044e7a470016e05e59i0

There's a fart in the blockchain.

and you think that a fart is an efficient use of a blockchain..
and you think that a fart is worthy of immutable requirement
(facepalm)

(pre-empting your silly thoughts and laughable moments)
just because bitcoins purpose is financial related, it does not mean it should have a fart in it

[Abiky]

I know there's already a thread on Ordinals in the Development & Technical Discussion board but it's more on the technical side of things.

I guess it's interesting to hear what others have to say on what this latest development fundamentally entails or implies. There have been opposing views on this even among Bitcoin developers.

Some would say this kind of non-financial transaction isn't what Bitcoin is designed for. Surely, however, somebody could just brush this off somehow putting Satoshi's original idea seemingly subservient to what the community currently wants to make of it. Ordinals' Rodarmor himself asserted that Bitcoin has already "transcended the intentions of its creator."^[1]

While a core developer dismissed this controversy as a non-issue, another core developer went as far as calling this an attack on Bitcoin itself. While somebody doesn't understand the fuss over something which is dumb and should simply be forgotten, even Adam Back, perhaps out of frustration, had to call it a "fair-game for miners to censor the crap as a form of discouragement." Of course, he had to retract it in the name of Bitcoin being censorship-resistant and permission-less. But even Rodamor himself had to also censor, at least from Ordinals' site, a lewd image inscription.^[2]

The launch of the Ordinals protocol even put into question whether Bitcoin's base layer should be left alone or be kept open for anybody to tinker with and develop. Some would even call for Bitcoin's ossification to protect it from features that have possible negative repercussions.

And then there's also the issue of fungibility considering that a Satoshi assigned with a unique inscription such as an image or even a video is no longer the same with the rest.

What is your opinion on this? Are you in favor of this or not?

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/01/31/bitcoin-community-erupts-in-existential-debate-over-nft-project-ordinals/
[2] https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-ordinals-creators-look-for-fix-after-first-instance-of-shock-porn

I think it's a bad idea to use the main Bitcoin blockchain for anything other than finance applications. It will clog up the network until fees skyrocket like crazy. NFTs will make matters worse, especially when anyone can get a copy of a JPEG image online just to put it on the Blockchain. The rate of which new NFTs are added on-chain, could make Bitcoin unusable in the long run. What was the creator of Ordinals thinking? Wasn't it best to build the protocol using an off-chain scaling solution like the Lightning Network? It would've helped prevent Blockchain bloat with too many NFT transactions. Not to mention, it puts Bitcoin's security at risk.

There's a reason why BTC was meant to be used solely for finance. Not as an "all-in-one" platform for dApps, NFTs, and tokens (like it's the case with Ethereum and BNB). As a result of mass adoption from Ordinals NFTs, Bitcoin's on-chain fees increased a little. Let's see how everything will turn out to be in the long run, when more NFTs are added to the chain. Hopefully, BTC Core developers will find a solution to keep the cryptocurrency as decentralized and cost-effective to anyone as possible. Just my thoughts

[gordonhill]

Any marketplace for this, or escrow service?

[Bitcoiner317]

There’s so many people complaining about this
That I don’t understand why no action is being taken. Is our only course of action just really downgrading core hoping others do the same?

/r Bitcoin mod literally removed a post I made raising concern about ordinals because there’s apparently "too much threads about it" when in reality, mostly memes are posted to the sub. It made me join here to talk Bitcoin instead, but it doesn’t help the fact that more awareness should be raised about this issue.

It’s sad to think about but.. I feel like if the Bitcoin ecosystem has come to not care about integrality issues like these (or at least stopped acting on them) the future is bleak. Have any core devs been vocal about it since the renewed debate? I’d be curious to read what they have to say.

[franky1]

as you are learning.
mods dont want negative speak made about ordinals

those same mods own the moderation privilege of other development too
including github

they do not want tosee it stopped
any attempt to stop it outside the core team is treated as opposition and the core team with REKT any brand of any other full node that tries to oppose, stop, or change bitcoin

welcome to centralisation. core own bitcoin

[pooya87]

Is our only course of action just really downgrading core hoping others do the same?

That's not a good idea because the only way for that to work is to downgrade to an older version that doesn't have the Taproot code (so it considers it non-standard) so that it stops relaying them. But it will stop relaying ALL Taproot transaction instead of only the spam ones which is not what we want.

The other problem is that your node would also be incapable of verifying Taproot transactions in blocks which means it will no longer be a full node and if everyone does that, the security of the chain is threatened.

[franky1]

no pooya you are wrong there are other options

other options are
taproot devs made a promise that taproot witness would look like a single signature of <80bytes
and so keeping to that promise they can release a client we all upgrade to. that from block 7xx,xxx all taproots relayed at unconfirm are only 80byte limit witness. and if they get into a block after 7xx,xxx they would reject a block that breaks the rule


that way it does not stop proper use of taproot, nor does it cause a re-org, nor does it cause the stuff you speak of
it actually enforces the rules that were promised. by strengthening consensus rules and tx format policy as should be the case all along

[Bitcoiner317]

other options are
taproot devs made a promise that taproot witness would look like a single signature of <80bytes
and so keeping to that promise they can release a client we all upgrade to. that from block 7xx,xxx all taproots relayed at unconfirm are only 80byte limit witness. and if they get into a block after 7xx,xxx they would reject a block that breaks the rule

That's great and all but no action will be taken if the community is censored. Do we need to send a petition to the Devs or somethings?  :lol:

So Bitcoin Magazine also censors concerns now? I posted the following comment on a youtube video and it was deleted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUAHex8wSag&ab_channel=BitcoinMagazine

Ordinals will most likely be a problem in the future it's important to talk about it. Average block size exploded, the mempool is through the roof. This will lead to longer time to download the chain when setting up a node, more Hard disk space needed - making it harder for low revenue households to run a node and participate in decentralization. People with a lot of money can now pay big fees to have priority over monerary transactions and are celebrated for it. All for stupid JPGs that could've easily been hosted on a sidechain to Bitcoin. I'm pretty sure that most people who updated to Taproot had NO CLUE that it would lead to that or they WOULD HAVE NOT updated to Taproot.

This is an issue and the community needs to take action before it's too late. Surely there's a way to limit Ordinals or give them a bigger disadvantage towards transactions. It may not look like a problem now but think about the future. Hell, you don't even have to think further than the next Bullrun to figure this bloat will make fees and delays explode onchain. Now think 50 years from now - ridiculous.

That CK guy in the video said: "If this is what takes Bitcoin down, well then Bitcoin wasn't what we thought it was, lol". As if he doesn't understand that it's his responsability as a voice in the community to make sure Bitcoin stays strong and stable. Who are these clowns? I'm seriously being disillusioned towards Bitcoin since this debate... I know anyone can use Bitcoin, I know it is permissionless - but I thought we at least agreed that main chain needed to stay simple and provide a strong base layer. It's what we've been preaching for years.

[franky1]

bitcoin HAD strong hard consensus. but over the years it has been softened to allow more and more things through that required less and less community agreement, preparedness, evaluation, and verifiability of before such things happened.

but to undo these things only one dev team has gained the prominence to allow such. they pretend when things go good they done it due to everyones adoration of their teams idea.. but it does not require everyones adoration for their things to activate..anymore

ading noew loose things is easy for them. but trying to get the community to tighten up the rules against their methods. is met with savage tactics to remove the core opposition

.. when it goes bad they pretend they are just janitors/caretakers. and not involved in the code. and some how its as asic machine that caused it, or some outside user that made it happen

its very shameful methodology, but thats how dev politics is playing it these last few years

some devs proudly admit their egotistic methods, others are ashamed. even some lead maintainers quit due to realising they were part of some centralist point of failure

satoshi left becasue he didnt want people seeing him as a central point of failure
gavin left becasue of the brand wars of disliking the direction things were continuing to go
core devs branded themselves the core of the network
and even more recently even wlad the latest lead maintainer left noting he was seen as a centralist point of failure

but if any other brand wanted to  run on the bitcoin network.. but also try to do what core think only core should do.. that brand would get REKT

all proposals need to go through the monotony of layers of core dev moderation. and they have put in alot of layers to protect them from having things change their roadmap too easily