'Attack on Bitcoin’ Claims Circulate as Transaction Fees Climb Higher

[pooya87]

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This whole argument about increasing block size is irrelevant here because the adoption hasn't increased and legitimate usage of this "payment system" is not higher than the current existing capacity to require a capacity increase.

Right now there is a mempool congestion and fees are high only because of the ongoing attack so the solution to that is to prevent the attack not increase the capacity to store more of their spam transactions. After all Bitcoin is not a cloud storage so that we increase the block size so that these attackers can store more of their arbitrary data in its blockchain.

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[Abiky]

This whole argument about increasing block size is irrelevant here because the adoption hasn't increased and legitimate usage of this "payment system" is not higher than the current existing capacity to require a capacity increase.

Right now there is a mempool congestion and fees are high only because of the ongoing attack so the solution to that is to prevent the attack not increase the capacity to store more of their spam transactions. After all Bitcoin is not a cloud storage so that we increase the block size so that these attackers can store more of their arbitrary data in its blockchain.

I believe at some point, the "attacker" is going to run out of funds. When that happens, network fees will decline back to the way they were. But increasing the block size, will give the "attacker" more room to continue flooding the Blockchain with "spam". I really hope things settle in the long run, especially if we want BTC to be used as "digital cash" (not a store of value). The current situation will force many people to move to an altcoin with lower network congestion.

Bitcoin's Lightning Network is definitely not an option. Especially when you need to pay a high on-chain fee to open/close a channel. The LN is limited to the main chain's transaction capacity. I don't get why developers keep focusing on L2 instead of what matters most. Only time will tell us what lies ahead for Bitcoin. As long as it remains a decentralized and censorship-resistant cryptocurrency, there should be nothing to worry about.

[DooMAD]

Bitcoin's Lightning Network is definitely not an option. Especially when you need to pay a high on-chain fee to open/close a channel. The LN is limited to the main chain's transaction capacity. I don't get why developers keep focusing on L2 instead of what matters most.

Because L2 doesn't end with Lightning.  It's also the gateway to the next layers and the things that can be built there.  It's "big picture" stuff, but people are only looking at what they can see now.  Try not to cast a final judgement when you haven't seen the final product yet.

[pooya87]

I believe at some point, the "attacker" is going to run out of funds.

That's the problem with this form of attack, there is not centralized attacked with a limited amount of funds. They got regular newbies to participate in the attack without knowing it. And they will continue to have funds as long as there is a market where they can scam each other with fake things they call "token" or "BRC-whatevers".

Since the token market (ICO scam that started years ago) is not dead, I don't see any reason for this scam market to die either.

[dezoel]

All these conspiracy theory type of things do not really phase me, I do not believe them. I have been involved with crypto for nearly ten years, and I can tell you that I have heard it all, from FBI trying to stop it to governments trying to block it to many other things, none of that ever came true, media tries sometimes but media is not just one place, some try to kill it while others promote it as well.

So all in all, I think it should be considered fine, we can't really make it work any other way, it just doesn't feel like it could be all that much terrible. I hope that people could realize that nobody is attacking, we are growing, we are as high as possible, it is 40k+ dollars per bitcoin, nothing that gets an attack could grow this well.

[Abiky]

All these conspiracy theory type of things do not really phase me, I do not believe them. I have been involved with crypto for nearly ten years, and I can tell you that I have heard it all, from FBI trying to stop it to governments trying to block it to many other things, none of that ever came true, media tries sometimes but media is not just one place, some try to kill it while others promote it as well.

So all in all, I think it should be considered fine, we can't really make it work any other way, it just doesn't feel like it could be all that much terrible. I hope that people could realize that nobody is attacking, we are growing, we are as high as possible, it is 40k+ dollars per bitcoin, nothing that gets an attack could grow this well.

One can never know the true intentions of the government. BTC has been soaring in price despite the rising fees, anyways. Miners are the ones who're winning, while the "attacker" is losing big time. It will all fade away after the hype comes to an end. We just need to be patient.

It's a good thing we're not limited to a single cryptocurrency for day-to-day payments. With plenty of altcoins to choose from, we can save money on fees. There's also Bitcoin's Lightning Network (although still experimental) for those who don't want to abandon the premier cryptocurrency. Whenever governments like it or not, Bitcoin will be here to stay for a long time. After all, it's the future of money. As long as it stays decentralized, there should be nothing to worry about.

[Danydee]

All these conspiracy theory type of things do not really phase me, I do not believe them. I have been involved with crypto for nearly ten years, and I can tell you that I have heard it all, from FBI trying to stop it to governments trying to block it to many other things, none of that ever came true, media tries sometimes but media is not just one place, some try to kill it while others promote it as well.

So all in all, I think it should be considered fine, we can't really make it work any other way, it just doesn't feel like it could be all that much terrible. I hope that people could realize that nobody is attacking, we are growing, we are as high as possible, it is 40k+ dollars per bitcoin, nothing that gets an attack could grow this well.

One can never know the true intentions of the government. BTC has been soaring in price despite the rising fees, anyways. Miners are the ones who're winning, while the "attacker" is losing big time. It will all fade away after the hype comes to an end. We just need to be patient.

It would be extremely naive and so "idiot" to think governments could proceed an or their attack with like an (assault tank) !

A typical and first move to (I don't like to call it govs, lets call "Evil") to do is to infiltrate the whole community.. . And when you see the nowadays influence of big govs over cryptos and the level of the ations they can try comparatively the thing is no longer just a theory but appears clearly to be fact !



And to be clear about my point of view, there is no "attacker".. the schema is clear: price start rising in correlation with the activity.. then fees follows too, so the activity is braked which is abviously echoes the price.. and vice-versa again and again !

We are here now:  Bitcoin is already no longer able to sustain to the needs of the network !




just, Jaaaa.. that excellent tweet to laugh a bit ! (or not? )
https://x.com/moo9000/status/1747550937885884479?

[pooya87]

The biggest challenge in attacks like Ordinals is that majority of the participants in the attack don't know what they're doing. You can see that clearly in this post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5481797.0

They all fall for the scam and think they can make a buck by participating in a hype. Most of them have no idea what they're doing, nor do they know what bitcoin is and how it works!
You can see here how one person is the reason for "tens of thousands" of spam transactions contributing to the ongoing Ordinals Attack and even they are facing the consequences of the attack with their lack of understanding of Bitcoin protocol (ie. lots of dust transactions that would cost more to spend that he made).

Let me quote myself again:

The main characteristic of a successful malicious attack on bitcoin is to get the bitcoin users to do it not yourself. Remember the nonsense called "stress test" years ago? It wasn't just one silly company spamming the network. They got bitcoiners to spam too by funding loads of addresses with small amounts then publishing their private keys. The result was nodes that were flooded by double spends and the mempool that was flooded with spam transactions that didn't come from a single attacker.
In that scenario CoinWallet was the origin of the attack but wasn't the lone attacker.

That is the main principle that the Ordinals Attack is using too. It is not one entity that performs the attack but they have fooled loads of people to participate in it by creating the parallel scam market and the tools to perform the attack.
In this scenario Casey Rodarmor, Unisat, etc. is the origin of the attack but aren't the lone attackers.

The principle is commonly used in color revolutions, which I dare say is what's been happening to Bitcoin. One of the signs is seeing old bitcoiners defending this exploit of the protocol in the name of Bitcoin principles such as censorship resistance!

[Abiky]

It would be extremely naive and so "idiot" to think governments could proceed an or their attack with like an (assault tank) !

A typical and first move to (I don't like to call it govs, lets call "Evil") to do is to infiltrate the whole community.. . And when you see the nowadays influence of big govs over cryptos and the level of the ations they can try comparatively the thing is no longer just a theory but appears clearly to be fact !



And to be clear about my point of view, there is no "attacker".. the schema is clear: price start rising in correlation with the activity.. then fees follows too, so the activity is braked which is abviously echoes the price.. and vice-versa again and again !

We are here now:  Bitcoin is already no longer able to sustain to the needs of the network !




just, Jaaaa.. that excellent tweet to laugh a bit ! (or not? )
https://x.com/moo9000/status/1747550937885884479?

That's the plan. To make Bitcoin expensive so people would stay away from it. BTC is now Wall Street's coin, especially with the approval of spot ETFs in the US and abroad. You can see why see wealthy figures like Michael Saylor and Elon Musk are supporting Ordinals inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain. Miners and the Elite win, while average people (like you and me) lose.

Fortunately, fees won't stay high forever. At some point, the craze will end leaving us with the opportunity to use BTC on a daily basis. Market prices will react negatively when fees stay high for a prolonged period of time. That's the way it works. Ordinals supporters should move to ETH and leave Bitcoin alone. We can't predict the future, so lets hope for the best.

[gmaxwell]

When your body gets a virus you get sick as your immune system fights off the infection.  Most of the symptoms you experience aren't from the virus-- they're from the immune response.

Bitcoin has a defense against flooding attacks.  Like your immune system, this defense is somewhat painful even to things which aren't the attacker.  But whatever the attacker is willing to spend, it'll eventually be exhausted and Bitcoin will be free to continue.

Compare to BSV, for example, which removed the defenses... where in a few days >100GBytes was added to their utxo set, their chain is now terabytes in spite of virtually no real use, and the fact that its impractical for anyone else to validate it let them slip in rules that allow the miner to steal any coin it wants.  And these harms remain forever, even when the attack stops.

Is Bitcoin's defense the most that can be done against flooding attacks?  Perhaps not.  Especially for ones that involve conscription (suckering other users into participating in the attack) it may be possible to convince the conscripts to stop.  Unfortuantely, conscription is usually fueled through things like the unbridled greed attached to seigniorage.  It's hard to convince people to not fuck over others when they think they can Make Money Fast.  Attempts to do so can backfire and just give validation and free press to the attack. (something some people have been quick to exploit, it's not that uncommon to find that the very first online mention of some new sketchy thing is anonymous complaints that the thing is being attacked or opposed. ::sigh:

[bbc.reporter]

It appears that the conscripts are again back hehehe. I have also read some information being shared in social media saying that there are some developers who want to bring the Ethereum virtual machine to Bitcoin and use this for settlement. This will be very head shaking if EVM on Bitcoin will become a popular alternative for Ethereum because EVM users are very much okay on paying very high fees.



Demand for NFTs has been growing in recent weeks amid rising cryptocurrency prices, and Monday’s $16 million sale of a CryptoPunk—the fifth-most expensive NFT sale to date—put an exclamation point on that trend.

But the top overall NFT marketplace over the last few days isn’t the same one that ruled the pile as recently as mid-February, as the tides of the marketplace wars have shifted yet again. And the latest startup to take the throne can credit Bitcoin Ordinals for much of that shake-up.

Source https://decrypt.co/220154/bitcoin-ordinals-reshaping-nft-marketplace-landscape

[Abiky]

It appears that the conscripts are again back hehehe. I have also read some information being shared in social media saying that there are some developers who want to bring the Ethereum virtual machine to Bitcoin and use this for settlement. This will be very head shaking if EVM on Bitcoin will become a popular alternative for Ethereum because EVM users are very much okay on paying very high fees.

I think that's already been done with RSK (if I'm not mistaken). Bitcoin can finally have the capability of interfacing with EVM-based smart contracts. Since the aforementioned solution is a sidechain, Bitcoin's on-chain performance will remain unaffected. Not like Ordinals which are "inscribed" on the main Bitcoin blockchain. There are other sidechains with smart contract capabilities that are dissimilar to the EVM (Stacks, bitVM).

With upcoming network upgrades, I'm hopeful "high fees" will become a thing of the past in the long run. In the meantime, the Lightning Network would be the only solution to keep using BTC without the high costs or long wait times. If only it had a better UX, people would've adopted it by now. Who knows what will happen in the future?