Why was Ordinal NFTs created?

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MeCsc:
The introduction of inscriptions on Bitcoin’s mainnet made the creation of Ordinal NFTs on the bitcoin Blockchain. I have read lot of negative comments about the effects of Ordinal NFTs on Bitcoin Blockchain and so I would like to know why it was still created despite negative effects it can have,Although there are some positive comments, The negative comments are something that can cause stressing issues later on.

philipma1957:
Think of the blockchain as a road.

When it was built it was designed to handle data traffic.

So someone has figured a way to put data on the chain and monetize it.

ie ordinals.

Arguing against ordinal traffic is pretty much like arguing against single occupied cars on highways.

They crowd the road bla bla bla.

Most people simply don’t understand the value of ordinals or nfts.

Simply small in the box thinking.

d5000:
Short answer: Because you can ... ;D

Long answer: A mechanism to create "series numbers" of satoshis was discussed already several years ago in this forum. I don't remember the exact year (and also not the link to the thread) but I mean it was around 2013. So it was only a matter of time until someone might have read the thread and simply implemented it.

What's my problem with Ordinals is not the "ordinal system" itself, but the Inscription feature. And here I do have a question to Casey Rodarmor (the creator):

Why did you create the NFT system as a Taproot hack, and not with the established data storing mechanisms, i.e. OP_RETURN? I know "it's cheaper", but I think if he had implemented it in a system where large NFTs would have been stored in several OP_RETURN transactions (or even better: on a data sidechain, where only the hashes would have been stored on the Bitcoin blockchain), people wouldn't have that many problems with it.

pooya87:
The simple fact that it is called "NFT" while it is not NFT and not even a token, should answer your question that this is a scam. This is basically an attack that is created to turn bitcoin blockchain into a cloud storage and effectively making it unusable as a "peer to peer digital cash".

Otherwise they could have created the same system on a side-chain that would have also been a lot cheaper than using bitcoin mainnet and abusing Taproot scripts. Which is another reason why Ordinals is malicious.

thecodebear:
Well it was created because it could be created. Anything that can be created will be created. The creator of Ordinals realized there was a way to spam data into transactions, an unintended consequence that was left open in the Taproot upgrade. People don't like it because it spams data into transactions, therefore filling up blocks with arbitrary data in the form of NFTs rather than monetary transaction data.

It's an interesting use of bitcoin, but it in no way helps Bitcoin, while it does hurt Bitcoin's ability to perform monetary transactions on-chain, which as we all know was already at a premium. Unfortunately there is a market for lame collections of digital images to be sold for money and therefore the economics of NFTs is such that the transaction fees are worth sending them around on Bitcoin.

Imagine you have a four lane highway and then someone realizes that there is no rule against circuses marching along the highway. Suddenly you've got several lanes filled up with a circus act while the people actually trying to travel have to be stuffed into one or two lanes instead of four. And there is a small but sufficient amount of those people who are willing to pay to watch the circus in the other lanes so the circus act clogging up the road is economically viable. That's what NFTs does to Bitcoin.

An interesting idea to think about is if NFTs end up spamming Bitcoin so much that they take over the chain, will it end up being in the best interest of Bitcoin to hard fork away with an anti-Ordinals upgrade and leave the original blockchain as a dead-end NFT-focused s**tcoin. That would be a very drastic scenario but Ordinals is essentially a spam attack on Bitcoin that is unlikely to go away as it seems even though the NFT fad largely died off already there are still enough people interested in paying money for cheap collections of digital images on the blockchain that the economics of NFTs are still worth it. The general consensus of the Bitcoin is to keep the chain immutable and not hard fork, but in cases such as this where unintended consequences of upgrades end up attacking Bitcoin and making it less useful the community may at some point need to consider moving the chain on to an upgrade that isn't compatible with such an attack, unless a soft-fork to stop Ordinals is possible.

But the answer to the questions is it was created because it could be. And yes it is an interesting use of Bitcoin, it's just not a good use of Bitcoin, due to Bitcoin being the digital currency for all of humanity and transaction space being at a premium. The last thing Bitcoin needs is arbitrary non-currency data lessening its ability to move money around.

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