On Ordinals: Where do you stand?

[be.open]

Although the current frenzy around funny green frog pictures seems a little artificially stimulated, this is another great stress test to test the Bitcoin network for anti-fragility and a clear demonstration in real time that the network can remain stable even in the distant future, when the reward for the block will tend to zero and the commission will be the only incentive for miners to continue working without relying only on sheer enthusiasm.

The only way you can know what will happen when the block reward goes to 0 is to wait and see. I'm sure transaction fees right now make up a small percentage of the overall income from mining a block. So it's not like miners could sustain themself from just monkeys.

If you were not so unreasonably self-confident, you could, for example, look into any blockchain explorer that you like and see for yourself that the fees in the current block were 3.482 BTC.

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[dragonvslinux]

So if you're willing to pay 0.001 BTC ~$28 then it's all OK.

I guess if someone has a balance of say $300 then paying $28 for a withdrawal fee seems a bit high. What's the goal of being in crypto if you're having to fork out 10% fees every time you want to make a transaction? Just wondering. Because when you pay a 10% fee you need bitcoin to go up by 10% to cover your a**. 

There's the old phrase "for the tech". In this case for example, Binance is looking at implementing Lightning withdrawals, which won't cost anywhere near mainnet transactions. People forget Bitcoin remains young and still in it's infancy of development. If you're investing in Bitcoin is should be for the future of it's use as money and store of value. In the meantime, there will be network congestion from high demand, the need to scale.

[serveria.com]

As for the current topic, have read a bit more into the whole "ordeal". I still see nothing wrong and only high demand. I get that it can be frustrating for average users wanting to make transactions to either have to wait or pay high gas fees, but if you're going to use Bitcoin, you should be aware that this can be the case. As I said before, otherwise use Lightning network. Ideally this will help drive further adoption.

Also on a selfish note the last month or so has been pretty boring for Bitcoin imo. This actually makes it more interesting in my opinion. Miners must be having a blast with transaction fees per block that have higher than the 6.25 block reward. I did used to think that it was possible that block rewards going so low could reduce hash rate growth over-time, so looks like this situation has removed that theory.

Although the current frenzy around funny green frog pictures seems a little artificially stimulated, this is another great stress test to test the Bitcoin network for anti-fragility and a clear demonstration in real time that the network can remain stable even in the distant future, when the reward for the block will tend to zero and the commission will be the only incentive for miners to continue working without relying only on sheer enthusiasm.

But does Bitcoin need any stress tests? Anyone, who has been in Bitcoin for a while, knows that Bitcoin is a very rugged technology. It's not easy to break Bitcoin. Do we need any further stress testing? I doubt it.

As to the miners, they do receive block rewards as well as transaction fees. It's a business, if it wouldn't be profitable it would not exist. I wouldn't call it sheer enthusiasm. 

[be.open]

But does Bitcoin need any stress tests? Anyone, who has been in Bitcoin for a while, knows that Bitcoin is a very rugged technology. It's not easy to break Bitcoin. Do we need any further stress testing? I doubt it.

You can evade the synthetic test, but not the challenge of real life. The bitcoin network is still stable. However, look how much dissatisfaction there is from lovers of cheap transactions. There are even calls to declare the current version of bitcoin wrong and return everything as it was by the method of dividing the network.

As to the miners, they do receive block rewards as well as transaction fees. It's a business, if it wouldn't be profitable it would not exist. I wouldn't call it sheer enthusiasm.  

The entire first year of the Bitcoin network and even more, mining was unprofitable and worked on pure enthusiasm. Now everything has changed, but do not forget about the origins.

[Hispo]

But does Bitcoin need any stress tests? Anyone, who has been in Bitcoin for a while, knows that Bitcoin is a very rugged technology. It's not easy to break Bitcoin. Do we need any further stress testing? I doubt it.

You can evade the synthetic test, but not the challenge of real life. The bitcoin network is still stable. However, look how much dissatisfaction there is from lovers of cheap transactions. There are even calls to declare the current version of bitcoin wrong and return everything as it was by the method of dividing the network.

As to the miners, they do receive block rewards as well as transaction fees. It's a business, if it wouldn't be profitable it would not exist. I wouldn't call it sheer enthusiasm.  

The entire first year of the Bitcoin network and even more, mining was unprofitable and worked on pure enthusiasm. Now everything has changed, but do not forget about the origins.

I am not as well informed about the vision Satoshi had for Bitcoin beyond the first years of existence. But I assume he would picture mining to become profitable eventually as his project grew through time.

Because, obviously he needed to created a good reason for the miners to work and there is no better universal incentive in this life than money and love. Unfortunately much of the love and passion for the project is long gone now profitability is more important.

It makes me kind of sad to see the Mempool in such state, to be honest.

[Wind_FURY]

But that's the "problem" with Ordinals, some of those being built, and communities formed, might be incentived to keep "spamming" the blockchain because some users found out that dick pics/fart sounds are valuable, and they could make profit from them. It's not a real problem by itself, but it's definitely an inconvenience for users who want to use Bitcoin for financial transactions.

For a user who sends a dick pics or fart sound hoping to make a profit, this is also a financial transaction. And he paid the current actual price for its inclusion in the blockchain. This use case of the bitcoin network seems unusual to you, but this does not make it wrong. Don't worry, bitcoin has already proven itself anti-fragile enough not to break at the sound of a fart.

It doesn't change the fact that it has become very inconvenient for the rest of the participants. Because they merely wanted to make a profit? Blockstream's Liquid Network is better for what they're trying to do because it will give them lower fees, and a higher transaction throughput. More savings = more profit.

But it's not their fault, they simply don't know. I believe Blockstream should start marketing and let developers and users know that they can also build their network of dick pics in Liquid. It's probably the same situation when developers built Ethereum off-chain layers which has seen increased usage.

[be.open]

But that's the "problem" with Ordinals, some of those being built, and communities formed, might be incentived to keep "spamming" the blockchain because some users found out that dick pics/fart sounds are valuable, and they could make profit from them. It's not a real problem by itself, but it's definitely an inconvenience for users who want to use Bitcoin for financial transactions.

For a user who sends a dick pics or fart sound hoping to make a profit, this is also a financial transaction. And he paid the current actual price for its inclusion in the blockchain. This use case of the bitcoin network seems unusual to you, but this does not make it wrong. Don't worry, bitcoin has already proven itself anti-fragile enough not to break at the sound of a fart.

It doesn't change the fact that it has become very inconvenient for the rest of the participants. Because they merely wanted to make a profit? Blockstream's Liquid Network is better for what they're trying to do because it will give them lower fees, and a higher transaction throughput. More savings = more profit.

But it's not their fault, they simply don't know. I believe Blockstream should start marketing and let developers and users know that they can also build their network of dick pics in Liquid. It's probably the same situation when developers built Ethereum off-chain layers which has seen increased usage.

I think it is useless to appeal to the voice of reason when there are an abnormally large number of idiots in the market (in the sense of non-professional players). This seems to be a sure sign that we are now in the vicinity of the local maximum of the bitcoin market price and a crushing collapse will soon follow. Please do not take this as investment advice.

The good news is that after the crash, fee prices will be low again, without any soft fork.

[Artemis3]

Remember when Bitcoin could still be used to pay and be paid with? Those were the days...

[dragonvslinux]

As for the current topic, have read a bit more into the whole "ordeal". I still see nothing wrong and only high demand. I get that it can be frustrating for average users wanting to make transactions to either have to wait or pay high gas fees, but if you're going to use Bitcoin, you should be aware that this can be the case. As I said before, otherwise use Lightning network. Ideally this will help drive further adoption.

Also on a selfish note the last month or so has been pretty boring for Bitcoin imo. This actually makes it more interesting in my opinion. Miners must be having a blast with transaction fees per block that have higher than the 6.25 block reward. I did used to think that it was possible that block rewards going so low could reduce hash rate growth over-time, so looks like this situation has removed that theory.

Although the current frenzy around funny green frog pictures seems a little artificially stimulated, this is another great stress test to test the Bitcoin network for anti-fragility and a clear demonstration in real time that the network can remain stable even in the distant future, when the reward for the block will tend to zero and the commission will be the only incentive for miners to continue working without relying only on sheer enthusiasm.

As to the miners, they do receive block rewards as well as transaction fees. It's a business, if it wouldn't be profitable it would not exist. I wouldn't call it sheer enthusiasm.  

Also how about sheer financial incentive? Right now there are blocks being mined with fee rewards per block that are higher than the 6.25 fixed block reward. While I doubt it's sustainable long-term as transactions move over to L2s, the point is already with only a few halvings Bitcoin can be very sustainable with a 0 fixed block reward, if from fees it's possible to get the same amount right now.

Sooner than later there will be an equilibrium between fee rewards and block rewards it seems, prior to fee rewards being higher than block rewards.

[franky1]

Also how about sheer financial incentive? Right now there are blocks being mined with fee rewards per block that are higher than the 6.25 fixed block reward. While I doubt it's sustainable long-term

those fee's are not really from that many independent individuals . they are the same groups as the mining pool managers. basically making high fee's to pay themselves back.. thus not much loss is incurred when producing high fee transactions becasue they are the sender and receiver of fee's

as for trying to say people will use L2
moat subnetworks are stagnant. no ones using them for real world stuff its just businesses locking up their reserves and sitting on the numbers to make it look popular

heck even ethereum does not have much of an active community with its subnetworks, if it did then the market rate of CEX would be independant as they would have their own price discovery. however they shadow trace the ups and downs of bitcoin meaning they dont have their own price discovery/values/features sentiment

i know idiots want/sponsored to push everyone to abandon bitcoin and use weak subnets. but thats just the greedy businesses and their contracted idiot teams of idiot promoters of sub services
they want people to have to pay channel fee's and routing fee's because businesses cant make money out of p2p bitcoin transactions so they want to stop p2p bitcoin payments and force everyone to hate bitcoin and move onto these subnetworks that charge fee's by requiring these middlemen businesses as hops/route managers

[LewisMachina]

BRC-20's made the ordinals even more interesting

[yenerbatmaz]

Can someone with great expertise in transaction confirmations explain what's going on with BRC20 mints getting purged sometimes 1-2 days after they show up in Unisat wallet ?

Example: you mint a highly popular collection where average transaction is around 200 SATS /vb, within a few confirmations BRC20 tokens show up in your wallet;

however 3-4 hours later, you find out that now average transaction is 500 sats, and your transaction has actually been purged now you have 0 of those tokens,

the Unisat interface is a bit buggy so it's not even clear if the transaction fee is reversed in this case, many accounts of people spending 200-300 USD and not even being able to mint anything...


Can someone be monitoring market prices of already minted collections, and then trying to mint the same collection with 1000 sats / vb if they see that it's profitable to do so, and therefore frontrunning people who thought they minted successfully a few hours ago at 300-400 sats ?.. If so, where is the cut off point, how many confirmations are needed until a transaction can't be front run in this manner ?

Some detailed explanation of this mechanic would be appreciated, thanks.

[d5000]

Can someone with great expertise in transaction confirmations explain what's going on with BRC20 mints getting purged sometimes 1-2 days after they show up in Unisat wallet ?

I can only speculate, but it may be related to the fact that Ordinals inscriptions (and thus, all BRC20 transfers) need two separate transactions, one to create the Taproot output and the other one to spend it and reveal the data. So you may have created successfully the first tx for the fee level you chose (e.g. 200 sat/byte), but for the token coming to life, you need the second one, and this one gets not through because the fee level has risen. Yes, frontrunning can be possible in this scenario, although using RBF you can adapt your fee to the upside (if you've enough money in the input you used for the transaction ).

I don't know how Unisat works so it may also be something different. Transactions in Bitcoin can't be "purged", they can only come through or not. The only way is a chain re-org, but I highly doubt this is the case here, as chain reorgs are extremely expensive for miners.

Simply stay away and don't expect much help here. BRC-20 will probably soon be dead, it's terribly flawed. I think people are already late for the hype, nobody will want to pay more fees than what the tokens are worth. If you really want to create a token on BTC blockchain use Counterparty, Omni, or RGB - they only need 1 transaction per token transfer, and this tx is even smaller (costs less fees) because they're efficiently encoded, not as a JSON text like BRC-20. BRC-20 is an experiment, treat it like that.

[Artemis3]

Well, just a reminder that Ordinals publicly demonstrated the exploit, it has not been "just Ordinals" after that, like i said in February, other spammers saw and joined so they are collectively doing something like a DDoS. Indeed most DDoS attacks are time limited (they have to pay to maintain it, after all). But, there is a financial incentive, directly by selling the spam, and indirectly by backers of other projects beyond Bitcoin.

But for how long, and how often?. Nothing can be done about it? I have read comments that it is indeed possible to make it harder for the spammers to continue sabotaging Bitcoin. Consensus needs to be made, of course. That is the point of bringing this issue here in the past 4 months.

Its not 3 people telling devs what to do, but a big mass of people, like its occurring right now across several social media. Keep focused people, the naysayers are reveling themselves for what they are and what they support. Anyone defending the spam is against Bitcoin.

For bitcoin is the electronic cash of the world, not a database of random data for those who can afford it... There are other projects that would serve that purpose better, like Namecoin. Don't take it personally against Ordinals, but point at the spam as a whole, especially this type of spam.

Of course there is a domino effect in fee hike, it used to occur during normal transaction peaks like when some exchange moves funds around their wallets. But now we have this, and the earlier can combine with the current...

Perfect storm brewing? We know there are people very happy with this. Pay close attention to who is who.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I explicitly mentioned that anything that falls within the accepted methods of performing things can be considered not-spam.

Anything can be considered spam, and anything can be considered otherwise. It'd be equally right to say that OP_RETURN is spam, because it doesn't fall within your previous definition of "transaction". The truth, no matter how unpleasant, is that every transaction byte is understood equally by the protocol. You're in the disturbing position to accept ordinals deserve some space, just like any other transaction.

I'm, myself, considering this shit spam, but I have much more to lose if I risk turning bitcoin into a censorship nightmare.

You can't use second layer if the primary layer isn't functioning well. In other words this will have the exact opposite effect since the cost of moving in and out of LN channel is also high.

Censoring the main layer is neither a functioning well layer.

[dragonvslinux]

Also how about sheer financial incentive? Right now there are blocks being mined with fee rewards per block that are higher than the 6.25 fixed block reward. While I doubt it's sustainable long-term

those fee's are not really from that many independent individuals . they are the same groups as the mining pool managers. basically making high fee's to pay themselves back.. thus not much loss is incurred when producing high fee transactions becasue they are the sender and receiver of fee's

Not sure I follow your point here. It seems that most of the high transaction fees are from "BRC20" inscriptions (due to high data requirement), aside from those wanting to process transactions quickly. I was hearing yesterday that while minting these inscriptions the cost can be upwards to $1,000 from individual users, while previously was around $100, as opposed to the $10-20 for processing a simple transaction.

To me the loss or gain is subjective. If you mint an ordinal inscription for $1K and can sell for $10K then there's no loss, only gain. If it becomes worthless, then you've lost $1K. I understand the logic of what you are saying of mining pools creating high transaction fees and effectively getting most their fee cost back, but otherwise there are hundreds if not thousands of individuals inscribing on Bitcoin right now.

as for trying to say people will use L2
moat subnetworks are stagnant. no ones using them for real world stuff its just businesses locking up their reserves and sitting on the numbers to make it look popular

I actually agree not many are using L2, at least it's not the "buying a coffee" style transactions many envisaged happening years ago. But this is also because mainnet has been relatively cheap with $1-ish fast transactions, so there is never a need or an L2 until the cost of transactions increasing on the main network. Ie nobody really cares if it costs 1 cent or $1 if you are transacting over $10/100 for example (at least in my opinion). But now that transactions are upwards of $10, there is a need fort L2 to have faster adoption, for the obviousness of facilitating small $10 payments, as well as even $100 etc.

Already we see the likes of Binance looking to implement Lightning network. Why didn't they do it sooner given it's been around for years? There was little to no need. Times have changed since then though.

heck even ethereum does not have much of an active community with its subnetworks, if it did then the market rate of CEX would be independant as they would have their own price discovery. however they shadow trace the ups and downs of bitcoin meaning they dont have their own price discovery/values/features sentiment

Not that I'd be making the comparison between Ethereum L2s and Bitcoin L2s, as they are very very different, a lot of the reason people don't trust Ethereum L2s is because they are generally unreliable as well as unstable. By comaprison Bitcoin's L2s are actually a lot more secure, even if much less used. Nonetheless, both Bitcoin & Ethereum L2s continue to grow in popularity during times of high fees.

i know idiots want/sponsored to push everyone to abandon bitcoin and use weak subnets. but thats just the greedy businesses and their contracted idiot teams of idiot promoters of sub services
they want people to have to pay channel fee's and routing fee's because businesses cant make money out of p2p bitcoin transactions so they want to stop p2p bitcoin payments and force everyone to hate bitcoin and move onto these subnetworks that charge fee's by requiring these middlemen businesses as hops/route managers

This just simply isn't true, nobody is talking about abandoning Bitcoin's mainnet, but potentially only using it when necessary. For example when you want to increase/reduce liquidity on an L2. Bitcoin's mainnet will always be the settlement layer, but settlement isn't that necessary for small amounts of money imo. Especially if it's going to cost $10, even potentially $100 in the future, in order to have payments settle.

Sure there is a lot of incentive for businesses to encourage L2s in order to make money, but what exactly are mining companies doing if not to make money? I honestly don't think transaction fees will ever dramatically reduce on the mainnet as instead usage will be sustained, in the meantime there can be L2 solutions that become 10x more popular than they are now, without effecting mainnet usage.

As per usual, just my two satoshis on the matter. Ultimately, if for whatever reason the ordinals fad passes and transactions fees return to a more reasonable/normal level, there again won't be much reason for L2 solutions to be adopted in a hurry. I'm not expecting it to happen overnight, it might take a few years or even a few decades, but to me it's simply inevitable, whether we like it or not.

[franky1]

Also how about sheer financial incentive? Right now there are blocks being mined with fee rewards per block that are higher than the 6.25 fixed block reward. While I doubt it's sustainable long-term

those fee's are not really from that many independent individuals . they are the same groups as the mining pool managers. basically making high fee's to pay themselves back.. thus not much loss is incurred when producing high fee transactions becasue they are the sender and receiver of fee's

Not sure I follow your point here. It seems that most of the high transaction fees are from "BRC20" inscriptions

no

the 'first sat' spam (ordinal v1) caused fee mania in february
the memes spam (ordinal v2) took up alot of data and fee mania in march
the brc json (ordinal v3) spam is only about 60bytes, yet caused fee mania in april due to just alot of tx's, not alot of content

then there was a bit of no sat ordinal counter attack spam in first week of may
so no its not the brc crap

whats happening now is just plain paying huge fee for no reason

heck while writing this i checked the latest block and first tx was this

https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/transactions/btc/32cc9bc0c18baffee995342cd1ed1da0e8e94feeb572d69c10e41b12a2fb7571

paying over 1000sats/byte for a simple 1in-2 out with no added bloat data.

i checked this morning too and the same thing. wasting a utxo spend just to cause fee mania

I understand the logic of what you are saying of mining pools creating high transaction fees and effectively getting most their fee cost back, but otherwise there are hundreds if not thousands of individuals inscribing on Bitcoin right now.

actually you are wrong here too
if it was truly thousands of individuals. then the meme army of bloat would not have just dropped to near zero in the same few days. because random people not connected dont collaborate to a mandate
however when its just a couple idiots that give up. then you notice when they give up

so yep when the memes stopped and pretty much over night the next version of spam started at the same time. you know its the same small group of idiots

[Artemis3]

So according to Dune analytics, 60% of the current "transactions" are brc-20. That's only part of the spam...

[be.open]

Also how about sheer financial incentive? Right now there are blocks being mined with fee rewards per block that are higher than the 6.25 fixed block reward. While I doubt it's sustainable long-term

those fee's are not really from that many independent individuals . they are the same groups as the mining pool managers. basically making high fee's to pay themselves back.. thus not much loss is incurred when producing high fee transactions becasue they are the sender and receiver of fee's

The idea is interesting, but I do not quite understand the logic. Even if some dishonest mining pool manager artificially inflates the price of transactions, he has no guarantees that it is his pool that will catch the next block, which means there is a fairly high probability that his overpriced commission will go to another pool and he will simply lose his money. Or am I not understanding something?

Keep focused people, the naysayers are reveling themselves for what they are and what they support. Anyone defending the spam is against Bitcoin.

Please try to be more tolerant of confirmed transactions with fees above your personal comfort level. You're pretty aggressive and obsessive about showing some sort of transactional racism, and it's exhausting.

[Artemis3]

Really? Are you exhausted? Then brace yourself:

Ordisrespector

We can run this fork and kick the spam out of our nodes.

Now go organize your "spam rights" protests... Everyone here clearly knows who you defend here, and who you are against. And your lame fw.


In case you don't get it, we don't care about the tx fee, we care about NOT bitcoin tx fees polluting Bitcoin. Go take your memes and uber trash elsewhere.