On Ordinals: Where do you stand?

[BlackHatCoiner]

When you buy an NFT, you do buy the rights to a file, but you could do that just as easily without a blockchain.

The funny part is that an NFT doesn't even do what it says; it doesn't act as an alternative to written contract, because no law protects copyrights according to the blockchain.

Now it's time nutildah tries to ridicule the forum members by saying that "we don't understand NFTs" or "NFTs is the next Bitcoin" or "you're like no coiners".

ISPs don't store the data, and especially don't store it in cleartext.

As I've said in another thread, I don't make legal statements, because I'm not a lawyer, but ethically-speaking, is it just me or you give too much attention to whether a digital file comes in clear text or encrypted? Okay, let's say ISPs store the data encrypted. Would you feel less guilty if you moved illegal files encrypted without your consent? Does this eliminate the ethical concern?

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[NotATether]

seems like the inevitable end result of this is going to be people uploading their video "shorts" to bitcoin. 

Almost all "short" videos are too big to occupy a single block, and even for those which are small enough, they will have to pay a large premium in fees to get it inside a block because it will displace hundreds of other transactions that could've gone in there.

Besides, nobody's using Ethereum for that (yet).

[n0nce]

When you buy an NFT, you do buy the rights to a file, but you could do that just as easily without a blockchain.

The funny part is that an NFT doesn't even do what it says; it doesn't act as an alternative to written contract, because no law protects copyrights according to the blockchain.

Exactly. And even if it existed, you would still need a way to enforce it, which makes it no better than traditional ownership documents.
The following list by Loyce is pretty accurate:

The list gets longer and longer: altcoins > tokens > ICOs > Forks > DeFi > NFT > Ordinals.

Have we all forgot about the early phase (here called 'Altcoins') where the 'next big thing' was 'Blockchain, not Bitcoin'? People were trying to solve all sorts of stuff with blockchain, just because. Then we realized a blockchain only really makes sense as a base layer for a Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, and now we've gone full circle, contemplating (yet again! this has been discussed almost a decade ago!) whether to use blockchains for all sorts of funny business?

ISPs don't store the data, and especially don't store it in cleartext.

As I've said in another thread, I don't make legal statements, because I'm not a lawyer, but ethically-speaking, is it just me or you give too much attention to whether a digital file comes in clear text or encrypted? Okay, let's say ISPs store the data encrypted. Would you feel less guilty if you moved illegal files encrypted without your consent? Does this eliminate the ethical concern?

Exactly, my ethical concern is removed as soon as (end-to-end) encryption is involved. If someone wanted to store their data on my server, sure. They encrypt it, upload it, (pay for it) and download it whenever they need it again. There is no way for me to either check that they didn't upload illegal content, while I most likely will not 'serve' such data to others either, since they won't have the decryption keys.
Since Ordinals are instead all about uploading and serving arbitrary unencrypted data to the whole world, though, it all changes.

[BlackHatCoiner]

There is no way for me to either check that they didn't upload illegal content

Doesn't seem rational behavior to me. You make it sound as if you check for every file uploaded to the Bitcoin network, and take ethical responsibility for each. And this responsibility goes away if the file is encrypted... just because you can't see it? Someone else can, though. And it might be proved later on that it's illegal / unethical. What do you feel in that case? Why does encryption removes this concern? How do you know which person owns the decryption key? Maybe the key is publicly accessible as well, which would nullify the whole "encrypting data on-chain" concept.

[n0nce]

There is no way for me to either check that they didn't upload illegal content

Doesn't seem rational behavior to me. You make it sound as if you check for every file uploaded to the Bitcoin network, and take ethical responsibility for each. And this responsibility goes away if the file is encrypted... just because you can't see it? Someone else can, though. And it might be proved later on that it's illegal / unethical. What do you feel in that case? Why does encryption removes this concern? How do you know which person owns the decryption key? Maybe the key is publicly accessible as well, which would nullify the whole "encrypting data on-chain" concept.

The one person has access to the file, but they had access before, as well, otherwise how did they upload it?
Of course, I did not completely think it through regarding sharing the decryption key. A regular cloud storage provider could be notified about the presence of e.g. someone's private pictures having been uploaded in encrypted fashion and decryption key posted online. In that case, the provider could take the material down. On blockchain, it's not possible. So that's just one more reason not to store files on the blockchain.

[BlackHatCoiner]

So that's just one more reason not to store files on the blockchain.

Yeah, but fortunately or not, it's possible.

I'm just trying to figure out where this ethical concern starts and where it ends. It's unethical to upload a movie on-chain in plain text, okay (I personally disagree, in the same manner I don't feel guilty for other people's transactions). It's apparently not unethical to upload it encrypted? Not until you find out what's in that encrypted file? How about links? Is it unethical to store an onion URL that points to a totally illegal place?

Putting censorship resistance above personal ethics is another thing I like about Bitcoin.

[NotATether]

I'm just trying to figure out where this ethical concern starts and where it ends. It's unethical to upload a movie on-chain in plain text, okay (I personally disagree, in the same manner I don't feel guilty for other people's transactions). It's apparently not unethical to upload it unencrypted? Not until you find out what's in that encrypted file? How about links? Is it unethical to store an onion URL that points to a totally illegal place?

Anti-piracy advocate groups would say all of those scenarios are all unethical, but then again, you'll get a different response from everybody, including from the people who pirate that stuff in the first place.

Nevertheless, there is what seems like a doctrine of stuff people consider universally illegal (which includes things obvious enough that I don't have to mention).

[franky1]

So that's just one more reason not to store files on the blockchain.

Yeah, but fortunately or not, it's possible.

I'm just trying to figure out where this ethical concern starts and where it ends. It's unethical to upload a movie on-chain in plain text, okay (I personally disagree, in the same manner I don't feel guilty for other people's transactions). It's apparently not unethical to upload it unencrypted? Not until you find out what's in that encrypted file? How about links? Is it unethical to store an onion URL that points to a totally illegal place?

Putting censorship resistance above personal ethics is another thing I like about Bitcoin.

everytime you mention "censorship resistance" your doing it with the foolish notion of the buzzword whereby your thinking using doomads version of the word

get away from his notion

bitcoin has many consensus mechanisms requiring consent of the network to allow certain things. yes some rules have been softened. but the network is still a system of requiring consent to meet some rule
(dont get upset and cry the doomad narrative that there is not and should not be any consent/consensus mechanism. and dont even try to suggest there never was a consensus system.. please dont sound like that idiot)
this is why trying to broadcast a litecoin transaction gets rejected, a tx of sat-dust amounts gets rejected, why a spent utxo gets rejected

pretending that bitcoin needs to be softened more to let anything in is a bad bad bad idea of breaking bitcoin to allow anything in. because then there are no rules meaning double spends can happen and accepting litecoins into bitcoin and any altcoin tx into bitcoin which breaks the units of value measure supply rules and such
i can continue on with many examples of bad precedences that can occur is the "softening" continues

bitcoin is not a censorship resistance network. its as consensus network
nodes fully comply and consent to rules of whats acceptable

heck. if we remove consensus and allowed censorship resistance.. then CSW can drop in some 2009 utxo's and without the network consensus.. the "censorship resistance" buzzword you are idolising due to your girlfriend. will accept CSW spending old utxo because doomad wants a system where no data/transaction is rejected

..
bitcoin needs to be a strong consensus network needing consent of the masses on what transactions are acceptable. by defining whats acceptable. such as needing the uxto keypair owners consent (by signature) to move the utxo value..
and not doomads silly rule breaking ideology. where he has no understanding of consensus or consent

please for once get out of doomads head of his desires and think about bitcoins network security and the benefit for the masses of value security of a network designed as a consensus based payment network/. not doomads "censorship resistance" bloated meme library network!.

bitcoin network nodes need the consent of the utxo keypair owner to allow a tx to confirm

bitcoin utxo owners need the consent of bitcoin network which set the tx format rules to form their tx in said format to get accepted as a viable tx for the network to accept

its this consensus system of the users agreement that makes bitcoin work. by uniting everyone based on established rules. not the other way round

[DooMAD]

everytime you mention "censorship resistance" your doing it with the foolish notion of the buzzword whereby your thinking using doomads version of the word

It's not a coincidence that people find my definitions accurate.  I base my definitions in reality.  You just have fantasies and delusions.

bitcoin is not a censorship resistance network. its as consensus network
nodes fully comply and consent to rules of whats acceptable

And all the things you hate about Bitcoin are deemed acceptable within the current consensus rules.  You can keep trying to redefine consensus as "6% of the network can veto changes" but it doesn't mean anyone else will accept that definition or that it will ever work like that in future.

[fillippone]

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You are correct about the limit of OP_RETURN as @ETFbitcoin pointed out but you are forgetting that the examples you used (documents related to ownership of a car or a house, etc.) has centralization attached to it so you don't need to store the whole document on bitcoin blockchain, but only some sort of link to it like a serial number or document hash, etc. and OP_RETURN's 80 byte limit is more than enough for that purpose.

Here is an example of real world application. Land registry by the government of Georgia using bitcoin blockchain:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/02/07/the-first-government-to-secure-land-titles-on-the-bitcoin-blockchain-expands-project/

Right,
There is no need to use the bitcoin blockchain, if in the end there is a centralized authority around.
I might have been to sloppy to find another example of a use case where the whole document needs to stay in the blockchain!
Maybe saving your seed?? /joke

[n0nce]

Putting censorship resistance above personal ethics is another thing I like about Bitcoin.

I am all for censorship resistant peer-to-peer electronic cash. That's what Bitcoin has always stood for; I don't understand why it can't stay this way and we have to expand to this all-encompassing 'censorship-resistant data storage + payments + social network' or whatever else people want to put on top of blockchain.

There are simply way better solutions for achieving decentralized, free data storage, better solutions for decentralized social networks or even digital ownership contracts. Not everything has to 'be on blockchain'.

The very concept of 'blockchaining' everything was contemplated almost a decade ago (and it actually failed). Why go full-circle and attempt it again?

[franky1]

Putting censorship resistance above personal ethics is another thing I like about Bitcoin.

I am all for censorship resistant peer-to-peer electronic cash. That's what Bitcoin has always stood for;

oh look the usual flock of people sniffing doomads 'offerings' too much

however
the bitcoin white paper never says the word censor resistant or censorship resistance
it mentions consensus more then once
it talks about rules and acceptance. and enforcement of rules

Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism.

[d5000]

But in first place, who would bother implement such feature? Even if someone decide to implement it and make PR request, would it be accepted by maintainer of certain full node software?

The "make OP_RETURN completely ignorable" (=not even necessary for block validation) part would have to be of course a BIP. If I remember it well, some altcoins like NXT have/had(?) such a feature.

The notify-and-take-down system however could be a separate software using Bitcoin Core's RPC interface, which could be provided by third-party developers; most likely simple Python scripts would be enough. The only thing Bitcoin Core would have to provide is a command like "delete OP_RETURN data from transaction X", and that would have to be part of the BIP.

The disadvantage is that this would make OP_RETURN data something very similar to a "sidechain" or "extension", and thus not part of the "canonical" chain, so it would be a quite massive change and conceptually very close to simply storing the data on another chain or in an off-blockchain P2P network. "Destructive" attackers wanting to "poison" the blockchain would for sure go for another methods: if Taproot is restricted, then use (as I already wrote) methods like fake addresses and amounts.

[larry_vw_1955]

Almost all "short" videos are too big to occupy a single block,

Inscription 147156 is a 9 second video. It's about 350 kilobytes. They paid about $50 to get it done. Lower the frame-rate, decrease the video resolution and you might be able to get in a 40 second video in half a megabyte.

and even for those which are small enough, they will have to pay a large premium in fees to get it inside a block because it will displace hundreds of other transactions that could've gone in there.

hundreds? that seems a bit over dramatic. people are paying $5 to $10 just to upload their jpegs.  

Putting censorship resistance above personal ethics is another thing I like about Bitcoin.

you can't have it both ways. pick one. thats to all the people who think bitcoin content has to be moderated somehow...

[franky1]

heres another mind fart to think about

censorship is resistance of something.
resisting resistance..

how do you resist resistance if your not ultimately resisting.

by saying that there should be no rules to limit data. is then censoring those that want efficiency and rules

enjoy the conundrum

..
but with that said. bitcoin is not a censorship resistance network. its a consensus network that relies on consent of the masses to avoid control by the few... until consensus was softened and now there are the few that do control the masses and the few want the masses to not have consent to resist the few

[larry_vw_1955]

heres another mind fart to think about

censorship is resistance of something.
resisting resistance..

how do you resist resistance if your not ultimately resisting.

by saying that there should be no rules to limit data. is then censoring those that want efficiency and rules

enjoy the conundrum

well the original point of bitcoin censorship resistance is so people have the freedom to be able to transact (send money) without a 3rd party's approval. 3rd parties are bad. now what unfortunately happened is the bitcoin rules weren't tight enough and they let in a little loophole that allows people to store data too in the same censorship resistant manner. who's fault is that? well of course its the devs! unless of course, that is what they intended all along but that's doubtful...

taproot really screwed things up didn't it franky?  i knew something like this was going to end up happening the more they threw in extra features for bitcoin, something like this was bound to happen. why i always say, do your initial specification, stick to that. don't add extra stuff. just keep it simple. but they couldn't leave well enough alone and this is the end result. bugs to fix, holes to patch...

[franky1]

there is a big difference between censorship resistance which some are abusing the buzzword to imply let any data be stored. pretending thats how the network always was
vs
decentralised consensus which a diverse distributed peers agreeing to a list of rules they all approve of and verify data against

which this decentralised consensus has been softened to not be a set of strict rules, by instead allowing stupid data to be accepted "asvalid" without verification or ruleset of whatever is inside the data of that trojan horse opcode

[larry_vw_1955]

which this decentralised consensus has been softened to not be a set of strict rules, by instead allowing stupid data to be accepted "asvalid" without verification or ruleset of whatever is inside the data of that trojan horse opcode

i don't follow the bitcoin mailing list religiously but can we assume that this is an active topic of discussion among the devs about how to fix this ordinals or did they just decide they don't care?

[franky1]

though the fixes are very simple and could have been implemented already,
a rule that allows upto 4mb does not break if rule is changed to upto 80 bytes. becasue 80bytes is still under 4mb. thus no harm to existing node version. it just requires mining pools to consent by consensus to unite and agree to follow the new rule when they make their block templates and only fill them with the new lean rule

and it can be activated at a certain blockheight using the same precedence method they implemented in 2017

devs are avoiding making decisions because if they do so over the next couple years it shows that core "owns" bitcoin(admitting they are the centralised point of failure/decision makers of the masses) and can change code. (they want to play dumb and act like janitors not developers) . its funny how they take the glory in some places and then shy away from responsibility in others by saying it was user caused or miner caused.. (asics dont write code)
(average joe that just downloads software dont write code) bitcoin core devs write the code that allow things to happen.. which then allow others to use the bugs added, to be abused

they want to demote themselves down to janitor instead of developer status because they are getting sued right now to try to change code to the whims of a scammer. so they dont want to be seen as having the ability to change code easily, else they cant then use the defence to prevent altering the code if the scammer wins

[larry_vw_1955]

though the fixes are very simple and could have been implemented already,
a rule that allows upto 4mb does not break if rule is changed to upto 80 bytes. becasue 80bytes is still under 4mb. thus no harm to existing node version. it just requires mining pools to consent by consensus to unite and agree to follow the new rule when they make their block templates and only fill them with the new lean rule

sounds like maybe just a config file setting needs to be changed from 4,000,000 to 80   the more nodes that changed that setting the harder it would be for people to upload their nfts I would imagine.

and it can be activated at a certain blockheight using the same precedence method they implemented in 2017

maybe i don't understand how that works. i guess it does depend on miners but miners depend on other nodes to get transactions to fill up their blocks. if those nodes didn't send them transactions that had witnesses larger than 80 bytes, people trying to upload nfts wouldn't be getting many images minted. so it seems to me, this is something each individual node can do if they want to. to make it harder for people to upload nfts. you vote by making that configuration file change. it has to start from the bottom. people runnig nodes have to raise their hand and say "no more". they have the power to do it too. each individual node.

now in all reality, maybe it's more than just a one-liner config file change but if someone posted a "how to" on how to make that change then that's how change can happen. until then nothing happens since the devs seem to don't care as franky pointed out.