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[NotATether]

All the developers need to do is strictly validate Taproot witness sizes, and this loophole will be closed, everything will go back to normal.

A few years ago, while they were designing this specification for Taproot, they said that they did not want to prevent other use cases with Taproot. But in hindsight, it was clearly a mistake not to impose strict validation.

I have sent a message to the bitcoin-dev mailing list with this proposal and I hope to start a huge conversation about it over there.

[be.open]

All the developers need to do is strictly validate Taproot witness sizes, and this loophole will be closed, everything will go back to normal.

A few years ago, while they were designing this specification for Taproot, they said that they did not want to prevent other use cases with Taproot. But in hindsight, it was clearly a mistake not to impose strict validation.

I have sent a message to the bitcoin-dev mailing list with this proposal and I hope to start a huge conversation about it over there.

How do you imagine it in terms of implementation? It should be some kind of open letter from the developers in the style of "dear miners, these records for the number of transactions are not at all the adoption that we all dreamed of, please vote for our changes so that you can earn less, and we can send transactions again with low commission"?

[hatshepsut93]

I think we are witnessing the first market failure of Bitcoin's fee market. Instead of efficiently distributing the rare commodity (blockspace) it has been monopolized by the ultra-rich who use it as a toy (NFTs). Maybe eventually the market forces will set everything right and NFTs will collapse like the beanie babies and tulips did, but this problem can be going on for years. The best solution would be to patch Bitcoin Core to make Bitcoin NFTs impossible, but development of Core is avery slow process and it can take years if the devs will decide to do it, which is a big "if".

[tiCeR]

All the developers need to do is strictly validate Taproot witness sizes, and this loophole will be closed, everything will go back to normal.

A few years ago, while they were designing this specification for Taproot, they said that they did not want to prevent other use cases with Taproot. But in hindsight, it was clearly a mistake not to impose strict validation.

I have sent a message to the bitcoin-dev mailing list with this proposal and I hope to start a huge conversation about it over there.

This is interesting and I thought that the biggest problem is this ordinals stuff creating this congestion, but then I came across this post

I've spoken about this before too: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5346270.msg57336047#msg57336047

The explanation is that lots of people just blindly accept the fee that their chosen wallet or website tells them, and that the vast majority of wallets and websites are absolutely awful at suggesting an appropriate fee. As you say, all it takes is one exchange to kick start the process by dumping a bunch of overpaying transactions in the mempool, and then 90% of wallets and websites out there start matching those exorbitant fees, and we get in to a vicious cycle. If everyone (exchanges included) actually just paid attention to the fee they are paying, then everyone could save 90% on all their fees, all the time.

and I wondered in how far exchanges and miners can actually manipulate fees by creating overly expensive transactions themselves and then hope for people to just accept whatever their wallet calculates as the required fees? It makes sense to me as there have been times where I didn't pay attention myself and accepted whatever had to be paid.

But again, could fee manipulation be a long-term problem despite increasing adoption? Both exchanges and miners would have an incentive to do it if it's possible.

[Amphenomenon]

Surprisely, some people doesn't see bitcoin scaling problem as an issue but in truth, it is an issue. In the earlier stages of the adoption of Bitcoin, the low transactions fee, speed, decentralisation and security where the features that interest adopters, then scaling problem became an issue but some don't even see it as an issue because they no longer see bitcoin as a means of payment but rather more as an asset (so it is a more of a means of investment).

 I don't really know why the developers are not interested in increasing the block size because this will actually helps miners and solve the scaling but they rather prefer using means that are more centralise than the Bitcoin Blockchain i.e LN for solving scaling problem and the mining pool which is actually helping miners by combining their hardware together to validate a block in nutshell is more of centralisation ( only few solo miners are actually being able to earn bitcoin ).

There are more negative comments than the positive about the effects of Ordinal NFTs on the bitcoin Blockchain and so I still don't know why they allowed Ordinal NFTs to remain in the blockchain.

[Fundamentals Of]

I knew the issue wouldn't die easily and quickly when it came out. I've read comments weeks after the Ordinals was launched that the noise would only be temporary and that it was starting to die down already, that the noise was just natural because it was something new and kind of controversial but it will be gone sooner rather than later. Now, it is not dying down. It is becoming a bigger issue. It is now becoming a strongly fundamental issue that might question the very role of Bitcoin.

What is Bitcoin really? Is it just something anybody has the freedom to use in whatever way allowed? Or does it have a strict purpose?

[saxtron3000]

I am of two minds:-

One is frantic and unfocused. I am wondering what is causing the huge jump in fees. I'm wondering if Ordinals have spammed the blockchain beyond control. I'm wondering why proponents of Ordinals explained that mining would be profitable again, while simultaneously eroding the very network it protects. I'm thinking that many people are priced out at this point. Either OGs are HODLing waiting for older prices to return. or noobs who are making their first transactions getting turned off and moving to shitcoins.

The other mind is calm and wise. Having seeing Bitcoin tested,  FUD'ed and attacked many times in the past, I realize that panic spreads quickly, people call 'Bitcoin is dead' for the millionth time but, as usual, the news cycle moves on, the hype dies down and tick-tock-next-block. Yes, it's  a shame that we will be burdened with low quality, .jpegs that unfortunately pass as art. Yes, LN isn't ready and sats are stuck on exchanges. Yes, it's going to take some time for the damage of the Ordinals bloatware to be shaken. But I think this will work out. I look at the blocks and see that there are many more blocks at the typical 1.60Mb. People are getting the 'no your keys, not your coin' arguments after 2022. The price is stable and recovering, hash rate is always up and more people are getting to see the difference between real Bitcoin and the Bitcoin the mainstream media presents.

Just wish it could be smoother sailing but, hey, if it's really decentralized and the money of the internet, it ain't gonna be a smooth ride - doesn't mean we can't enjoy it though. Gonna keep watching the mempool

[thecodebear]

Agreed their needs to be an update to enforce a size limit on this. This would immediately kill off this spammy use of Bitcoin. There are sidechains that allow NFTs and that's perfectly fine for people who for whatever reason want to do NFTs on Bitcoin to use a sidechain. There is zero reason it should be on the main chain and clogging everything up.

Unfortunately for whatever reason it doesn't seem like the devs feel any interest in fixing this unintended consequence of the taproot upgrade. Tx fees are only a few dollars now, so it isn't like an imminent problem, but transaction fees will likely go above $50 again in two years during the next explosive bull run and if NFTs are clogging things up its gonna be way worse. This is a problem that needs to be fixed and implemented in the next 12-18 months.

This would be like building railroad and letting people walk down the tracks in clown suits while slowing all the trains way down. This isn't a valuable use of the blockchain and is not what bitcoin was ever intended for. I'm all for expanding Bitcoin's uses (even pictures as NFTs is a pretty dumb use) but do it on a sidechain or a L2.


I think it is way over dramatic to say bitcoin is on its knees lol just because you have to pay a few bucks for a transaction. It's not like transactions have never been this high, let alone much higher before, but this will become a problem yeah when people start flooding back into Bitcoin. At this point in the market cycle tx fees should be like $1-$2.

[thecodebear]

One interesting thing to think about is, what if because of NFTs, we eventually get a fork of Bitcoin to fix this bug and it actually becomes Bitcoin, and the original Bitcoin blockchain just becomes a dead space for useless jpeg NFTs.

Not saying that will happen, but its a possibility. If Bitcoin devs never decide to fix this, and it goes on for years, and if the NFT jpeg fad continues, and bitcoin blocks are full of stupid NFT data and whatever other hacks of the bitcoin data this allows, I could see the community taking charge and leaving the devs behind and moving to a NFT-safe fork. I guess the main thing would be to get the miners to come along, maybe since we're already talking about a fork (in this scenario) we'd have to double the blocksize to increase txs to get the miners to move from the bloated NFT chain to the new real money Bitcoin chain.


Just a thought! I mean if they literally never fix this I think that would eventually warrant something as dramatic as leaving the original Bitcoin blockchain behind as a NFT dead space and move on with a fork that doesn't allow such attack vectors. I mean I think the main reason for there ever to be a fork of the blockchain is if an update introduced an attack vector to Bitcoin and the devs refused to fix it, and that's what this is. I guess time will tell if a fork will be needed.

[adaseb]

Yeah it’s pretty bad. I don’t think it was bad in 2021 but it was bad in 2017 with that hash wars saga where miners would switch to BCH network and it took forever to get transactions going on the Bitcoin network, many assumed Bitcoin would die then but it survived.

Currently with a 500 sat per byte fee, if all you got is a simple 1 input and 2 out put transaction it’ll cost $20. So it’s high but i am used to this because ETH network usually has these crazy fees. Their gas was like 250 Gwei last Friday.

[dragonvslinux]

Where are these publicists of stories about how they transferred $100,000,000 via bitcoin for just 10 cents? Where are they?

Using lightning network perhaps? Or at least seriously considering moving over to it. I think this is the endgame for the current issues of a bloated mainnet. I'm kinda glad this sort of thing is happening as scaling Bitcoin mainnet is virtually impossible, while having Layer 2s is the only solution. In these times I only look back at the development of the internet to see that there was nothing wrong with the original protocol, but it would take decades for L2/L3/L4 etc to develop in order to be able to watch videos and generally have high data transfers. In the meantime, many blamed the original protocol opting for something different...

Just like you can still transfer $100m for 10 cents if you are willing to be patient, Bitcoin clearly remains in it's infancy with a lot of development still to come, so patience remains key. Just my two satoshs.

[Kakmakr]

I do not know if you guys remembered the time when a casino (I think it was SatoshiDice) had all their bets on the Blockchain at one stage and it caused a lot of congestion. The forum went crazy and people agreed that use cases like this was causing too much congestion on-chain.

Well, that site is not operational anymore and things resolved it self.... so it is time for us to either find solutions for the problem OR to get rid of the problem. (Example : Creating a off-chain solution for those types of transactions) 

[Z390]

I always knew that those stupid Ordinals will be a problem, and this could go on for years, using a technology for something it was not created for, the person that detected this thinks they are smart but they are dub, If Buterin could went ahead and create Ethereum, he know that smart contract is impossible on Bitcoin, it's going to cause a big problem for Bitcoin, and here we are today.

[davis196]

You are spitting facts.
The only way to fight this nonsense would be to just not send any BTC anywhere and HODL. Unfortunately we will receive less BTC because of the high transaction fees, which is bad, but whatever. Just stay in a safe place until the storm goes away and this ordinals trend/hype slowly dies. The BTC miners obviously want this BRC-20 protocol, because they make more money from the higher transaction fees. I don't know how are we going to hardfork Bitcoin Core and kick out all the BRC-20 supporters. Maybe some of the Bitcoin Core developers must step in and express their opinions about this problem.

[o_e_l_e_o]

This is interesting and I thought that the biggest problem is this ordinals stuff creating this congestion, but then I came across this post

If you read the entire post of mine that you have quoted, you will see I was responding to a quote outlining a specific scenario where someone (usually an exchange) dumps a batch of transactions on the mempool at once, all of which pay a higher fee than needed, which then causes various wallets and websites to grossly and inappropriately increase their recommended fee to compensate. This remains a problem, but it is clearly not is what is happening right now. You only need to look at the transactions paying these exorbitant fees right now to see they are ordinals.

[NotATether]

How do you imagine it in terms of implementation? It should be some kind of open letter from the developers in the style of "dear miners, these records for the number of transactions are not at all the adoption that we all dreamed of, please vote for our changes so that you can earn less, and we can send transactions again with low commission"?

A soft fork basically, but yeah you're on the spot. It's going to have a footnote at the end though:

"Please be advised that your failure to agree to these changes by 1 November 2023 will result in a User Activated Soft Fork getting deployed to forcibly resolve the issue."

It worked for Segwit, it nearly scared them to death that time.

[stompix]

Who writes there that Visa and MasterCard are doomed?

And Western Union! Remember how it was expensive to pay 5$ for a 100$ cash transfer?  

Personally, I don’t care where they accepted bitcoin as a means of payment, in Africa or El Salvador, I don’t care how many bitcoins MicroStrategy has in their wallet and other pseudo signs of adoption that are only good for merry applause in the comments, I don’t care . For me, an adoption is when I have Bitcoin and I can freely pay it anywhere, at any time, and without any obvious overpayment, using various payment options, whether it be the main network or other network add-ons.

Ok, let's assume everyone would be like you, and we would have those 100 million Bitcoin users in India some claim they really exist, doing a single transaction to buy stuff. Suddenly you would have 100 million tx in the mempool, not 400k. How would that work?

Let's start admitting the past mistakes, sticking to this 1vMB block size it's just stupid!
It might have sounded reasonable by 2009 costs per TB and internet speeds back then but we're in 2023 when I can get 80Mbps on my phone in the mountains and a fucking 2tb EVO is 110$.

If the protocol that was supposed to bring down the whole old order, banks, central banks, and governments, change the global economy, raise millions out of poverty will die before achieving that because:
- you can't have a few thousand pay 200$ for a full node while we brag about 10000x profits
- a horde of jpg monkeys is crashing the network with daily fees that match only what the US Navy is spending daily on one! aircraft carrier group
then we must admit something went completely wrong in the planning!

[NotATether]

Let's start admitting the past mistakes, sticking to this 1vMB block size it's just stupid!
It might have sounded reasonable by 2009 costs per TB and internet speeds back then but we're in 2023 when I can get 80Mbps on my phone in the mountains and a fucking 2tb EVO is 110$.

That would be a good start but it would somehow have to be done in a way to avoid the pitfalls facing BCash and BSV - most transactions in a block are not real transactions but they are spam, but the only difference is, instead of flooding the mempool, they will eventually overwhelm the full nodes beyond disk capacity (remember that a large percentage of nodes are hosted on Hetzner and AWS).

So it's not something I see happening as it's currently idealized right now.

[stompix]

That would be a good start but it would somehow have to be done in a way to avoid the pitfalls facing BCash and BSV - most transactions in a block are not real transactions but they are spam, but the only difference is, instead of flooding the mempool, they will eventually overwhelm the full nodes beyond disk capacity (remember that a large percentage of nodes are hosted on Hetzner and AWS).

I don't think this is an issue since we had times with blocks being half full just a month ago, if nobody wanted to make a spam attack they won't be doing it with a 4vMB block size. As for the disk space, what would be the additional cost in let's say 3 years of full x4 blocks for a node?
50k blocks a year, 150k in three years, extra 500GB!

Also:
On BTC a 1 sat/b tx costs 4 cents on Bitcoin cash it's 200 times cheaper in $ value, so you could send about 2000 of them for the price of a soda can.