The severity of the Ordinals Attack is increasing

[be.open]

So, you are sure that in this section one more topic is needed to discuss the current situation. What are your constructive proposals for overcoming this crisis?

Pooya87 doesn't need to come forth with a solution to the problem, the fact that many people don't see this as a new problem that will greatly affect Bitcoin is what makes it a good discussion, many people think that this ks something we have seen several times in the past, and because it's also making Bitcoin miners rip good amount of profits but this is going to throw Bitcoin in a new BS situation.

Many new projects are getting on Bitcoin Ordi right now and some are just preparing to launch, the transaction fee will keep going higher from now on and many investors will quit Bitcoin, this is a valid reason to quit Bitcoin because people are violating its purpose.

The reality is that the possibility of introducing arbitrary data into the bitcoin blockchain has existed since the launch of the network, it’s just that no one has tried to widely use this possibility before. Read the previous sentence again and try to understand that this is not a bug, but a feature. If you consider this a dramatic problem, then the whole bitcoin is a mistake, because the problem does not have an adequate technical solution, only palliatives with very unpleasant side effects that still do not solve the problem, because it is of a fundamental nature.

Further, if we call it a "fungibility attack", then we have to admit that the attack would have no chance of any kind of success if the fungibility of bitcoins existed in reality, and was not an illusion and a figment of the imagination of a limited view of the open blockchain.

Bitcoin is not broken and there is nothing to fix here, the system continues to work normally. But perhaps many of us will have to reconsider again (I think not for the first and not even the last time) our outdated stereotypes about what bitcoin is, what its role and place in the world is. If for someone this experience is disappointing - this is an individual problem of his personal expectations.

[BenCodie]

So, you are sure that in this section one more topic is needed to discuss the current situation. What are your constructive proposals for overcoming this crisis?

I don't believe that anyone has a constructive proposal to overcome the crisis aside from removing the feature from the chain.

My new speculation/assumption is that Ordinals will remain a feature and that a new way of scaling to mitigate the effects that it is having on-chain will be implemented.

This will only get worse as the scam grows and the scammers and idiots trading this garbage don't care about paying $50, $100+ for a transaction if they are laundering money with a fake transaction they call a token that is worth $1100+ or have a chance of scamming an idiot who would pay them that much for this garbage.

This is important. NFTs were used to launder money, I have no doubt Ordinals would be too. I do doubt that this is the catalyst for the attack on Bitcoin. I believe that the attack is completely intentional and for the purpose of hindering the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Eventually, these adversaries will burn a significant hole in their pocket. It will either be a waiting game until it is no longer feasible to continue the attack/until it is not worth continuing, or until a scaling solution is incorporated to mitigate the effects.

[Smartprofit]

The fate of Bitcoin is in the hands of three groups of people. 

These are community members (coin owners), miners and developers.  In my opinion, at this time, the bitcoin ownership community should strongly urge bitcoin developers to make changes to the bitcoin code (i.e. soft fork). 

This is definitely a necessary step.  We all remember the year 2017, when two scoundrels Roger Ver and Jihan Wu decided to destroy the real bitcoin by replacing it with another coin called Bitcoin Cash.  In 2017, the Bitcoin network was also spammed with small transactions. 

At present, it is also necessary to repel the attack on Bitcoin and restore the state of equilibrium.  And this cannot be done without the participation of Bitcoin developers.

[pooya87]

Important thing to consider specially by those who say "this will go away".
Even if the attack were to be stopped today and the fees drop down to 1, the vulnerability that this attack is exploiting is not going to go away. Tomorrow this attack could start again or the day after tomorrow a new form of attack could exploit the same vulnerability to perform a new form of attack.

The exploit must be fixed/removed to solve this for good.

About the second quoted, man i cant believe some people here saying this its not an attack on BTC, i know maybe its not a coordinate or inittially its not an attack directly against BTC, but now in an abstrac way its an attack.

Well said. It doesn't have to be some evil witches in a lair with sinister laughter being echoed while they plan their attack
In fact the historical cases I was talking about were all the same, the attack is designed in a way that gets regular people to unknowingly participate in it. In 2015 the code name was "Stress Test", in 2023 the code name is "Ordinals".

The reality is that the possibility of introducing arbitrary data into the bitcoin blockchain has existed since the launch of the network, it’s just that no one has tried to widely use this possibility before.

Wrong.
They have tried using these vulnerabilities to perform similar attacks. In fact in early days there was an increasing number of transactions that used the outputs to store arbitrary data in the blockchain. That led to introduction of restrictions and eventually to OP_RETURN and its rules.
Ever since then we have been introducing strict rules to prevent similar attack vectors until the Taproot soft fork.

Read the previous sentence again and try to understand that this is not a bug, but a feature.
Bitcoin is not broken and there is nothing to fix here, the system continues to work normally.

It is not a feature, it is an oversight that led to a vulnerability being introduced into a small part of the protocol which is now being exploited. That also doesn't mean the whole bitcoin is broken just because a small vulnerability was found and exploited.

[Kakmakr]

I see suggestions that "rules" should be applied to stop these transactions and that miners should "block" these transactions, but I see no calls for people to protect Bitcoin's censorship resistance.    Is the idea behind Bitcoin, not for individuals or groups not to be able to "censor" certain transactions?

We should find other solutions to protect the Bitcoin network against attacks like this, without sacrificing the principles that are protecting the users transactions. 

[pooya87]

I see suggestions that "rules" should be applied to stop these transactions and that miners should "block" these transactions, but I see no calls for people to protect Bitcoin's censorship resistance.    Is the idea behind Bitcoin, not for individuals or groups not to be able to "censor" certain transactions?

We should find other solutions to protect the Bitcoin network against attacks like this, without sacrificing the principles that are protecting the users transactions. 

For your information we have been "censoring" this types of malicious transactions from very early days of bitcoin to protect all principles of bitcoin including censorship resistance.

Nobody says limiting OP_RETURN size is against censorship resistance or saying limits on the witness size for version 0 program is against censorship resistance. Same with 50+ other limitations.
So why should limiting the size of witness version 1 be against censorship resistance?

[Bigpiggy01]

For your information we have been "censoring" this types of malicious transactions from very early days of bitcoin to protect all principles of bitcoin including censorship resistance.

Exactly there was a lot of really unsavory stuff uploaded back in the early days. Which is also why it was a bit of a let down to see this current mess as not having been anticipated.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Problem now is to plan ahead of what you need and to just leave btc alone unless you want to get things stuck.

I had no idea what was causing the network congestion, and thanks to OP for starting this thread.  As to your comment, slaman29, I sort of agree; I don't know how many people actually use bitcoin to buy things, but I suspect it's a small but nontrivial amount.  There's probably not much a bitcoiner can do to avoid this shit--network fees have been crazy before, and it happens from time to time.  Right now if I'm not mistaken, some of said congestion has been relieved, no?

Honestly, if you're going to be buying anything using crypto through a payment processor you're probably better off keeping some litecoin or doge in reserve since those are usually accepted as well.  I've always thought bitcoin was a much better investment vehicle than it is a currency, and this nonsense is doing nothing to sway my opinion.

[Volgastallion]

I see suggestions that "rules" should be applied to stop these transactions and that miners should "block" these transactions, but I see no calls for people to protect Bitcoin's censorship resistance.    Is the idea behind Bitcoin, not for individuals or groups not to be able to "censor" certain transactions?

We should find other solutions to protect the Bitcoin network against attacks like this, without sacrificing the principles that are protecting the users transactions. 

For your information we have been "censoring" this types of malicious transactions from very early days of bitcoin to protect all principles of bitcoin including censorship resistance.

Nobody says limiting OP_RETURN size is against censorship resistance or saying limits on the witness size for version 0 program is against censorship resistance. Same with 50+ other limitations.
So why should limiting the size of witness version 1 be against censorship resistance?

YES.

ITs like i come now and i say, " look BTC its censoring me because i cant upload GTA 5 in a block of their blockchain".

Or if we have a family of 65 people and i go out and claim, "look the car industry its against me because they only transport 4/5 people".

Come on, dont confuse  rules or parameters with censoring.

[slaman29]

Problem now is to plan ahead of what you need and to just leave btc alone unless you want to get things stuck.

I had no idea what was causing the network congestion, and thanks to OP for starting this thread.  As to your comment, slaman29, I sort of agree; I don't know how many people actually use bitcoin to buy things, but I suspect it's a small but nontrivial amount.  There's probably not much a bitcoiner can do to avoid this shit--network fees have been crazy before, and it happens from time to time.  Right now if I'm not mistaken, some of said congestion has been relieved, no?

Honestly, if you're going to be buying anything using crypto through a payment processor you're probably better off keeping some litecoin or doge in reserve since those are usually accepted as well.  I've always thought bitcoin was a much better investment vehicle than it is a currency, and this nonsense is doing nothing to sway my opinion.

Based on my few years of experience on this forum, where supposedly we are all made of Bitcoiners, I really don't think there are that many people at all who use BTC. I'm not saying it's bad, but I'm active in gambling and I think I can know the same people who really gamble with BTC, the majority are just spammers.

Same in Bitcoin Discussion.

But I know some deliberately use BTC because they love the coin and want it to live. I get inspired by that, so I also use BTC just when possible, unfortunately this is not a lot of times.

However, as you said it is small but nontrivial, so it is enough that a few people use it, and it means the few nontrivial are affected by fees.

It's definitely not as bad as it was when first became an issue but big enough that if you pay some things you have to pay fees more than the item.

Somebody in a thread I am active in pays subscription for VPN and that's a few dollars. If the fee is same as that, not worth.

What you said about investment rather than currency I partially agree. For me BTC is like a remittance or wire transfer. I don't use it a lot compared to swiping my card or QR code or whatever. But for me depositing BTC into a casino, or sending BTC to some friend, or receiving BTC, or even shopping online, it can be nicer and cheaper to do, and for sure in terms of remittance, way way faster.

If you live in Asia try sending America or Europe some money or if you work abroad and send money home. Big big fees, big big delays, and sometimes stuck if the bank is a crap bank. It's definitely been useful for me as a currency, unfortunately I don't have enough to say investment, more like savings

[franky1]

the thing is.
those wanting to accumilate bitcoin now fear using the bitcoin network due to high costs.

it costs less now to wire transfer via western union than it does to remit via bitcoin. so people wont want to remit via bitcoin

those investing via trading wont want to withdraw coins from exchanges due to losing profits via fees

bitcoiners being told 'nothing should be done' to make bitcoin better, mitigate costs, avoid exploits, etc are being told this by people that love to offer other networks as solutions. these preachers are not bitcoiners.

[darkv0rt3x]

I see suggestions that "rules" should be applied to stop these transactions and that miners should "block" these transactions, but I see no calls for people to protect Bitcoin's censorship resistance.    Is the idea behind Bitcoin, not for individuals or groups not to be able to "censor" certain transactions?

We should find other solutions to protect the Bitcoin network against attacks like this, without sacrificing the principles that are protecting the users transactions. 

For your information we have been "censoring" this types of malicious transactions from very early days of bitcoin to protect all principles of bitcoin including censorship resistance.

Nobody says limiting OP_RETURN size is against censorship resistance or saying limits on the witness size for version 0 program is against censorship resistance. Same with 50+ other limitations.
So why should limiting the size of witness version 1 be against censorship resistance?

Yes, that's a good point. However, why seems that devs are not going to do anything about it? I think they don't want to do anything about it because of the censorship matter. Because some may see it as a censorship move or because they simply don't see this as an exploit / vulnerability.

[Volgastallion]

Based on my few years of experience on this forum, where supposedly we are all made of Bitcoiners, I really don't think there are that many people at all who use BTC. I'm not saying it's bad, but I'm active in gambling and I think I can know the same people who really gamble with BTC, the majority are just spammers.

Same in Bitcoin Discussion.

100% and in the gambling section that its really easy to see, you can measure that by the ammount of people talking divided by the ammount of people who really take part on pools, sahring bets , etc.

What you said about investment rather than currency I partially agree. For me BTC is like a remittance or wire transfer. I don't use it a lot compared to swiping my card or QR code or whatever. But for me depositing BTC into a casino, or sending BTC to some friend, or receiving BTC, or even shopping online, it can be nicer and cheaper to do, and for sure in terms of remittance, way way faster.

If you live in Asia try sending America or Europe some money or if you work abroad and send money home. Big big fees, big big delays, and sometimes stuck if the bank is a crap bank. It's definitely been useful for me as a currency, unfortunately I don't have enough to say investment, more like savings

Well, this its completly true, a lot of people have a occidental way (and its ok because they live there) to think and they can access easily to the banks international transfer etc, but in the rest of the world that its not easy, its really complicated depending on what country you are and also how much money and contacs do you have, in that part, crypto its very very useful to bypass that limitation.

the thing is.
those wanting to accumilate bitcoin now fear using the bitcoin network due to high costs.

it costs less now to wire transfer via western union than it does to remit via bitcoin. so people wont want to remit via bitcoin

those investing via trading wont want to withdraw coins from exchanges due to losing profits via fees

bitcoiners being told 'nothing should be done' to make bitcoin better, mitigate costs, avoid exploits, etc are being told this by people that love to offer other networks as solutions. these preachers are not bitcoiners.

Two things to say. First i think if you are gonna have BTC to accumulate, fees doesnt make a real problem, because if you have 20k usd pay 10 usd for withdraw or use them, its  not so bad (i know, i dont want to pay 10 usd but in the big pic its not big).

About your last point, this its like religion some people are ultra ortodox and dogmatic, but yes i think like you, those people doesnt know the harm they are doing.

[franky1]

the thing is.
those wanting to accumilate bitcoin now fear using the bitcoin network due to high costs.

it costs less now to wire transfer via western union than it does to remit via bitcoin. so people wont want to remit via bitcoin

those investing via trading wont want to withdraw coins from exchanges due to losing profits via fees

bitcoiners being told 'nothing should be done' to make bitcoin better, mitigate costs, avoid exploits, etc are being told this by people that love to offer other networks as solutions. these preachers are not bitcoiners.

Two things to say. First i think if you are gonna have BTC to accumulate, fees doesnt make a real problem, because if you have 20k usd pay 10 usd for withdraw or use them, its  not so bad (i know, i dont want to pay 10 usd but in the big pic its not big).

i mentioned 3 breeds of bitcoiners
investors throw more then small amounts in one go..accumulators put in small amounts regularly..

so the accumulator people will be hit by fee's each week/month
imagine it like throwing in $400 a month where fees were $40.. 10% fee is rediculous
now imagine third world countries like the unbanked. wher $40 is their entire months wage where they only want to put in $10 .. but fee's are $40

where as investors(not only whales) will have more coin but even if a whale, they will not want to keep withdrawing and depositing daily so end up using exchanges as custodians to keep profits

years ago i used to day trade a non-insignificant amount so i would withdrawal at night and deposit again the next day. but if fee's were this high then. i would not even bother depositing.
right now im just hoarding. i dont move my main stash for years. but my spending stash. well im giving that a rest too.. which is kind of a ridiculous thing to be doing on what was promised to be a payment system. and not im not going to shift value over to another network. i just find it stupid that we should put up with this crap when CODE can be wrote to make the system better. because thats what code can and should do. not the opposite

[Artemis3]

Important thing to consider specially by those who say "this will go away".
Even if the attack were to be stopped today and the fees drop down to 1, the vulnerability that this attack is exploiting is not going to go away. Tomorrow this attack could start again or the day after tomorrow a new form of attack could exploit the same vulnerability to perform a new form of attack.

The exploit must be fixed/removed to solve this for good.

This. I said it back in February, that Ordinals is just the beginning, and the problem will remain since they already demonstrated it, even if they stop, others will tryto abuse it. So it pointless to name the individual spammers, but close the vulnerability or at least mitigate it.


I was able to push $500 paying $2 after waiting a day, but the problem is that this current gridlock is not from bitcoin traffic, and traditionally we have seen real bitcoin transactions do this (like when exchanges move funds around), imagine when both occur...

Also remember other spammers are joining, because the doors remain open.



4 months of spam, and counting...

[umbara ardian]

You can see a lot of people are frustrated with gas fees and Bitcoin network congestion at the moment but know what to do because there are many transactions at the same time or a network attack. What we need to do now is reduce the hype over this news. The psychological impact of using the bitcoin network to transact is also less stressful. Instead, expect the development team to build solutions to improve and enhance the quality of the network. Bitcoin is a leader in this cryptocurrency and will not be defeated by a problem it has encountered in the past.

[suzanne5223]

You can see a lot of people are frustrated with gas fees and Bitcoin network congestion at the moment but know what to do because there are many transactions at the same time or a network attack.

Yes, there's a huge number of transactions at the same time but there's no network attack. Mind you, the insignificant block of Bitcoin was implemented by Satoshi to prevent any form of attack and the recent vast of the Bitcoin network was triggered by the Ordinal project.

What we need to do now is reduce the hype over this news.

Reduction of hype or any news is never the solution and the solution is people using the alternative which is the lightning network.

Instead, expect the development team to build solutions to improve and enhance the quality of the network.

Maybe they will come up with a solution or introduce a block increase.

[serveria.com]

I see suggestions that "rules" should be applied to stop these transactions and that miners should "block" these transactions, but I see no calls for people to protect Bitcoin's censorship resistance.    Is the idea behind Bitcoin, not for individuals or groups not to be able to "censor" certain transactions?

We should find other solutions to protect the Bitcoin network against attacks like this, without sacrificing the principles that are protecting the users transactions. 

These "because freedom" comments are just laughable. Let's stop using email filters and drown in spam. Let's legalize drugs and child porn "because freedom". Bitcoiners should have freedom to use Bitcoin and make transactions without being interfered by spammers. Do you agree?

[dragonvslinux]

I see suggestions that "rules" should be applied to stop these transactions and that miners should "block" these transactions, but I see no calls for people to protect Bitcoin's censorship resistance.    Is the idea behind Bitcoin, not for individuals or groups not to be able to "censor" certain transactions?

We should find other solutions to protect the Bitcoin network against attacks like this, without sacrificing the principles that are protecting the users transactions.  

These "because freedom" comments are just laughable. Let's stop using email filters and drown in spam. Let's legalize drugs and child porn "because freedom". Bitcoiners should have freedom to use Bitcoin and make transactions without being interfered by spammers. Do you agree?

Those are quite drastic comparisons and completely detached from reality. It wouldn't be the same as not using email filters, email is predominantly accessed on centralised servers/clients. It'd be like asking the internet protocol (that is decentralised and based on basic rules) to censor this spam in the first place, in order for it not to end up at the destination of email clients - that would be the equivalent of Bitcoin wallets.

Do you therefore think the IPv4 or IPv6 should be blocking spam, because the decentralsied network shouldn't allow it? This is what you are suggesting, and it's completely ridiculous if not obvious.

As for drugs or chil porn, these aren't technologies, so there is literally zero comparison. Not to mention there are centralised laws in place to criminalise these activities. Are you therefore suggesting Bitcoin implements centralised laws in order to criminalise these activities? Again, that would be the equivalent of what you are suggesting here. Please try harder next time with your poor quality comparisons.

So no, I don't think certain users should have priority over the network based on the use-case. The network was designed so that priority goes to those who pay the highest fees and follow the basic rules, nothing else, whether you like that or not. If you don't like that, then I suggest you stop using Bitcoin - as that's how it was designed. Likewise it's development has led to BRC20s and ordinals that certain users are paying more for. You can claim that they aren't Bitcoiners, but if you are sending satoshis to Bitcoin miners as fees as Bitcoin network user, for the network to verify, that makes you a Bitcoiner.

I really hope this situation with ordinals / high fees doesn't end up with 2017-esq hard fork proposals, as it's increasingly looks like people are pushing for centralised protocol "upgrades" with these rhetorics...

[serjent05]

You can see a lot of people are frustrated with gas fees and Bitcoin network congestion at the moment but know what to do because there are many transactions at the same time or a network attack.

Yes, there's a huge number of transactions at the same time but there's no network attack. Mind you, the insignificant block of Bitcoin was implemented by Satoshi to prevent any form of attack and the recent vast of the Bitcoin network was triggered by the Ordinal project.

What we need to do now is reduce the hype over this news.

Reduction of hype or any news is never the solution and the solution is people using the alternative which is the lightning network.

I wonder how effective the lightning network is.  How does the fee fare on-chain when we use this method.  I also think that lightning network is one of the solution but I am curious about the onchain transaction activity when we use lightning network.  Does it decrease the fee needed?

Instead, expect the development team to build solutions to improve and enhance the quality of the network.

Maybe they will come up with a solution or introduce a block increase.

If disabling the feature that enables Ordinals and BRC 20 is not the way to go then the developer should think of a way to improve the scalability of Bitcoin so that the network can accomodate and not be hampered by this attack or the robust transaction of BRC20 that congest the network.