(Ordinals) BRC-20 needs to be removed

[DooMAD]

One of the signs is seeing old bitcoiners defending this exploit of the protocol in the name of Bitcoin principles such as censorship resistance!

If an attacker manages to compel you to abandon the high ground and forfeit your principles, then the attacker has succeeded in their objective.

I'm not defending the exploit.  I'm saying your proposed cure is short-sighted and dangerous.  It would weaken Bitcoin's resilience and open up new (and far more severe) avenues of attack.

Find a better solution. 

[ABCbits]

You can see growth of the blockchain was relatively linear up until early February of this year, which is when the Ordinals fad really started to kick in, then it sped up since then:

https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_blockchain_size


Zooming out, blockchain size growth takes on more of an exponential quality but this probably isn't a good reason to hasten it.

that graph looks very linear to me even since february. yes the slope changed but only very small increase in slope of the line segment. so it doesn't appear to me that the blockchain is growing any faster than it was before ordinals came out. maybe a just a tiny bit more and i don't know why that would be but it doesn't seem out of control or anything. how could it be? bitcoin only allows X amount of data to be stored every 10 minutes or so...that hasn't changed ever i don't think.

Maybe you can see the difference easier if we draw 2 lines based on previous and current line segment. Although i would just show you chart of block size in last 1 year.


Source: https://www.statoshi.info/d/000000002/blocks?viewPanel=4&orgId=1&from=now-1y&to=now

[_act_]

After huge pumps and dumps / crashes / scams and other fails, a tiny amount of shitcoiners become enlightened and see the errors of these coins, and become Bitcoiners. But most don't learn, that part is true.

Some people may not know about bitcoin very well, fomo and invested at the wrong time like when bitcoin was at $65000. Bitcoin will still get to that price but lack of knowledge may make the people to sell at the wrong time and blame bitcoin.

What I am just saying is that in everything we do, we need to have good knowledge about it before risking our money. Some of the tokens will be scam from the beginning, some may be pumped and dumped, some may remain a shit coin. But all these are no more new like in 2017/2018 and can easily be known from a proper research.

Lack of knowledge can make some people to blame bitcoin, but without bitcoin tokens and non fungible tokens have been existing. But with the help of bitcoin taproot, the tokens and non fungible tokens existed and also increase transaction fee which makes bitcoin utility to increase.

It is not only that alone, because of Ordinals and Inscriptions that lead to bitcoin tokens, we can now see the ones developed for litecoin, doge and other altcoins that had no hope of getting tokens easily before.

[larry_vw_1955]

Maybe you can see the difference easier if we draw 2 lines based on previous and current line segment.

i can see how block sizes bumped up in february for sure but it's not like an exponential increase in block size they are just pushing the theoretical maximum limit of 4MB per block more i guess. the blockchain can't grow more than X amount of data per day. no matter how people are using it. before segwit that max limit was 1MB per block. so if someone has an issue about blockchain bloat then i guess they need to go back and complain about segwit then because it allowed the increase to 4MB...

[Cricktor]

<snip>

There's no reason to derail the topic in trying to question the use of Segwit as a cause for the current situation in my opinion. You don't get the numbers, do you? In the months before Ordinals and BRC-20 crap we had an average size of blocks around ~1.20MB. From Feb until now we're at an average of ~1.88M. That gives an increase of growth rate of ~56%. As I run nodes myself, that does concern me, indeed.

No one said, as far as I read here, that the recent growth was exponential of any kind. There's just a clearly visible step up of block size due to deliberately stuffed additional data, I call it garbage, into witness data of blocks.

[pooya87]

why do you think casey had any malicious intentions towards bitcoin? my best guess is he was just some guy that wanted to invent something and he had no idea or anything about anything else. lets not label him as a bad guy without some type of proof. maybe he's dumb because he didn't know he was opening up a pandoras box but dumb does not equal malicious does it?

I have a hard time believing that someone who is capable of finding an exploit in the protocol hidden in the verification rules and not publicly known, is someone who is "dumb" and doesn't know what he is doing.

Find a better solution. 

Well, we first need to get everyone to agree that we need to fix this oversight that is being exploited then begin arguing about the fix. Right now there are still people who either say "it will go away on its own" or claim "there should not be any fix at all".

[BrianH]

Well, we first need to get everyone to agree that we need to fix this oversight that is being exploited then begin arguing about the fix. Right now there are still people who either say "it will go away on its own" or claim "there should not be any fix at all".

Speaking of transaction fees, it now costs ~4x more to perform a Bitcoin transaction than Ethereum. Before, both were about the same. That seems to be the new average increase since this BRC-20 bug was introduced.

Source: YCHARTS

[larry_vw_1955]

I have a hard time believing that someone who is capable of finding an exploit in the protocol hidden in the verification rules and not publicly known, is someone who is "dumb" and doesn't know what he is doing.

numbering satoshis is not something casey came up with. that idea was born somewhere around 2012 because there's a thread on this forum about them. someone bumped that thread recently!

i'm sure he's a brilliant guy when it comes to technical aspects of bitcoin but he seems like he is in this bubble of people glorifying him and his "invention" whenever i heard him talking. these people just don't get it - the ones he's giving presentations to. they think is invention is great for bitcoin!  and apparently he does too so that's why i say he is dumb. for being a bit naive about how people really feel. i guess by now he knows though if he's had his ear to the ground at all.

Well, we first need to get everyone to agree that we need to fix this oversight that is being exploited then begin arguing about the fix. Right now there are still people who either say "it will go away on its own" or claim "there should not be any fix at all".

maybe you should reach out to casey. he was smart enough to design it. maybe he can help you mitigate it. but make sure you schmooze up to him. he seems to really shine when that's happening...

[gmaxwell]

*facepalm* I accidentally deleted ETFbitcoin's post above my reply, it's content is preserved in my quote (I'm not sure that it's all of it, unfortunately)... the quote/edit/delete buttons are right next to each other, and I don't use BCT much of late.  I'll send him a PM to repost it, and I'll fix the thread order.  

This is untrue.
1. It's publicly known since it's mentioned on BIP 342.
2. It's not really exploit when whoever write BIP 342 intentionally remove 10000 bytes script limit which exist on previous script type.
3. Few programmer such as @Coding Enthusiast also found out about it and raise concern at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5340900.0.

1 and 2 are correct, 3 is incorrect because it's talking about a different thing.

The post you've linked to is saying, effectively,  "The rules for witness type v0 further restrict the scriptpubkey to have exactly 20 or 32 bytes of payload, since that's the only sizes v0 can use.  With v1, instead, if the size isn't exactly 32 bytes (the only size that v1 can use) then the v1 rules aren't applied and those are treated the same as the other versions or v1 before the change: nothing is done, only the same validity rules apply as apply for all scriptpubkeys"  -- none of this has anything to do with data in the witnesses.

So for a scriptpubkey to get v1 treatment it must have v1 and exactly the right sized payload.  This leaves room e.g. to create a v1a that (for example) uses 33 bytes to add the sign back to the scriptpubkey or introduces 448 bit ECC without having to burn up an additional witness version number.

This consensus rule design doesn't improve people's ability to spam using large scriptpubkeys because the same large sizes are valid for non-segwit transactions and those couldn't be made consensus invalid without potentially destroying the bitcoins of someone who happened to have encumbered them with an nlocktime release that involves some large script.

Maybe the invalidity risk there is fringe enough that it could still be argued for, I think not, since the underlying attack that you'd be trying to stop doesn't really care *how* the data is encoded, closing off one will just cause them to use others-- but regardless, going around hobbling bitcoin's consensus rules to try to play wack a mole against some spam vector is a pretty *distinct* concern, and should be handled if at all separately and holistically.   Could you imagine if BIP 342 had an "oh yeah, and also all scriptpubkey's-- not just v1 but all unused witness types and non-segwit too are now limited to X bytes, hope you don't have any funds using long scripts that you can't move before BIP 342 gets activated!"? lol

[OgNasty]

That is the main principle that the Ordinals Attack is using too.

Maybe I'm just a non-technical dumb guy with too many opinions, but I honestly see no difference whatsoever between the "Ordinals Attack" and the Lightning Network Attack on Bitcoin.  They are literally the same thing.  Feel free to convince me I'm wrong.  The only difference between the two seems to be how the users want to use the blockchain.  They both benefit from the same subsidies that should have never been created anyway.  My hope is that this "attack" shows how dumb the layer 2 implementation currently is and maybe get developers to rethink a new situation that doesn't burden actual on chain users.  I don't know, maybe the super simple merged mining system satoshi himself thought was genius and would give users choices without burdening Bitcoin's blockchain to push some patented solution by a single company.

[pooya87]

I honestly see no difference whatsoever between the "Ordinals Attack" and the Lightning Network Attack on Bitcoin.  They are literally the same thing.

I honestly don't see how you can even begin to compare the two. They are like apples and oranges.

In Ordinals Attack you are storing arbitrary data (like bytes representation of an image) in the bitcoin blockchain by exploiting a flaw in the Taproot protocol. That is to treat blockchain as a cloud storage.

In Lightning Network the only thing you do on-chain is to send bitcoin in normal bitcoin transactions to a normal bitcoin address whenever you open/close a channel. There is no extra junk data being stored on chain. That is to treat blockchain as a payment system (what every other tx is doing too).

[HmmMAA]

I honestly see no difference whatsoever between the "Ordinals Attack" and the Lightning Network Attack on Bitcoin.  They are literally the same thing.

I honestly don't see how you can even begin to compare the two. They are like apples and oranges.

In Ordinals Attack you are storing arbitrary data (like bytes representation of an image) in the bitcoin blockchain by exploiting a flaw in the Taproot protocol. That is to treat blockchain as a cloud storage.

In Lightning Network the only thing you do on-chain is to send bitcoin in normal bitcoin transactions to a normal bitcoin address whenever you open/close a channel. There is no extra junk data being stored on chain. That is to treat blockchain as a payment system (what every other tx is doing too).

On the contrary , ordinals increase the security of the network by increasing the income of miners so the security overall , while LN "steal" fees from miners . Your problem is not to invest a couple hundred dollars to buy some TB disks while miners invest millions . That's insane , guys that want to spend nothing trying to control people that invest much money . Tired of hearing that apples and oranges comparison .

[BlackHatCoiner]

Maybe I'm just a non-technical dumb guy with too many opinions, but I honestly see no difference whatsoever between the "Ordinals Attack" and the Lightning Network Attack on Bitcoin.

Ordinals don't grant you the permission to use a nearly instant payment network with minimum transaction cost.

They are literally the same thing.

They are literally the opposite. Ordinals require abruptly large sized transactions, while lightning makes the best transaction compression to this date.

My hope is that this "attack" shows how dumb the layer 2 implementation currently is and maybe get developers to rethink a new situation that doesn't burden actual on chain users.

If this second layer solution didn't exist, I, as an average user, would have paid much more in on-chain fees in the last months.

On the contrary , ordinals increase the security of the network by increasing the income of miners so the security overall , while LN "steal" fees from miners .

And complete indolence does harm the network, and "steals" from the miners, because it sets limit on how usable Bitcoin is as currency. Without second layer, it's quite unusable for a 100 millions.

[ABCbits]

P.S. this is repost since my previous post was deleted by mistake.

Maybe you can see the difference easier if we draw 2 lines based on previous and current line segment.

i can see how block sizes bumped up in february for sure but it's not like an exponential increase in block size they are just pushing the theoretical maximum limit of 4MB per block more i guess. the blockchain can't grow more than X amount of data per day. no matter how people are using it. before segwit that max limit was 1MB per block. so if someone has an issue about blockchain bloat then i guess they need to go back and complain about segwit then because it allowed the increase to 4MB...

Indeed it's not exponential, but in long run it'll make time for initial block download become far longer.

why do you think casey had any malicious intentions towards bitcoin? my best guess is he was just some guy that wanted to invent something and he had no idea or anything about anything else. lets not label him as a bad guy without some type of proof. maybe he's dumb because he didn't know he was opening up a pandoras box but dumb does not equal malicious does it?

I have a hard time believing that someone who is capable of finding an exploit in the protocol hidden in the verification rules and not publicly known, is someone who is "dumb" and doesn't know what he is doing.

This is untrue.
1. It's publicly known since it's mentioned on BIP 342.
2. It's not really exploit when whoever write BIP 342 intentionally remove 10000 bytes script limit which exist on previous script type.
3. Few programmer such as @Coding Enthusiast also found out about it and raise concern at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5340900.0. See above detailed response by @gmaxwell.

[pooya87]

On the contrary , ordinals increase the security of the network by increasing the income of miners so the security overall ,

You could also perform a spam attack on the network to increase the fees and the income of the miners. Like 2017!

while LN "steal" fees from miners .

Wrong. LN doesn't remove on-chain transactions. In fact it increases the usage since people would have to open and close channels to enter and exit LN.

Your problem is not to invest a couple hundred dollars to buy some TB disks while miners invest millions . That's insane , guys that want to spend nothing trying to control people that invest much money . Tired of hearing that apples and oranges comparison .

That's just technobabble to justify abuse.
Bottom line is that whatever blockchain size is and whatever TB disks nodes buy doesn't change the fact that Bitcoin is not a cloud storage service.

[HmmMAA]

You could also perform a spam attack on the network to increase the fees and the income of the miners. Like 2017!

Look at the definition of spam , you can't call spam a transaction that pays more fees than normal . Try to find another term .
 If you had a store and someone was willing to pay you more than your asked price would you deny him your services ? On the contrary , you would leave the other customers and try to please him the most you could . You asked for a fee market , you made it and now people want to pay more to have their transactions validated . Why you call something an attack when it doesn't fit your narratives ?

Wrong. LN doesn't remove on-chain transactions. In fact it increases the usage since people would have to open and close channels to enter and exit LN.

Nope , you are wrong . If someone has enough liquidity can transact infinitely in LN without closing it's channel/s . In what way that person supports the miners ? On the contrary , with a very small investment , LN nodes work like parasites that suck fees from the true backbone of the system , that has cost billions of investment . Imagine if all transactions move to LN , and miners just wait to be paid from opening and closing channel fees . How would that be sustainable ?

That's just technobabble to justify abuse.
Bottom line is that whatever blockchain size is and whatever TB disks nodes buy doesn't change the fact that Bitcoin is not a cloud storage service.

Really ? History proves you wrong https://cirosantilli.com/cool-data-embedded-in-the-bitcoin-blockchain#illegal-content-of-block-229k
Not to mention that satoshi himself used blockchain as a "cloud storage" for his timestamp message .

[philipma1957]

As a miner its cool 😎 to see the high fees.

 The key 🔑 is do the high fees break the back of the 25k support.

Crashing us to a nice dip buy. Or do the crazy ass degenerate players that think they can break btc price support bust out.

The worst possible thing is removing BRC20 which would be fully admitting that BTC is a loser and can be broken by a piece of shit thing like BRC20

If you believe in btc you should support it by doing a few btc moves and paying high fees over the next two weeks.

IE on or two 10 dollar fees paid won’t break you over the next two weeks.


Crying to developers to fix it and having the developers do something is terrible.

Think of the future when fees are too small to support miners will you be crying for developers to raise the fees? I think not. Guess what miners will do down the road they will move to scrypt algo or any algo that supports mining.

Btc traders and users want small tiny fees miners want bigass fees.

The play goes back and forth.

Lets see what happens by June 1.

My guess is fees drop down and things go back to normal.

At 144 blocks a day and paying 1 or 2 coins each block you are spending 4.2 to 8.4 million a day in extra fees.

The people doing this will run out of coin. May take all of May but they will shoot their load and be spent.

I quoted myself about a month later. Fees are down to under 1 btc a block vs 2+ btc a block

last 10 blocks on June 5th

792990 ----- 0.61
792989 ----- 0.73
792988 ----- 0.72 > 2.06
792987 ----- 0.48
792986 ----- 0.56
792985 ----- 0.54 > 3.64
792984 ----- 0.59
792983 ----- 0.63
792982 ----- 0.57
792981 ----- 0.73 > 6.16



far less than may 9th date of my quoted post.

789000-----2.19
788999-----3.93
788998-----5.69 ----- 11.81
788997-----1.78
788996-----3.35
788995-----1.76 -----18.7
788994-----1.73
788993-----1.85
788992-----1.73
788991-----1.84-----25.85



Developers did nothing and fees went down bigly. May 9th to June 5th.

give the developers a pat on the back for the "wait and see move".


6.16 is way down from 25.85

[cryptosize]

Nope , you are wrong . If someone has enough liquidity can transact infinitely in LN without closing it's channel/s . In what way that person supports the miners ? On the contrary , with a very small investment , LN nodes work like parasites that suck fees from the true backbone of the system , that has cost billions of investment . Imagine if all transactions move to LN , and miners just wait to be paid from opening and closing channel fees . How would that be sustainable ?

That will never happen.

It will take decades to open channels for 8 billion people (assuming all transactions are LN-related, which they aren't, since we also have Ordinals and other stuff).

Besides, BTC uses a free market system to determine fees: https://mempool.space/

If fees drop again to 4 cents per TX (it happened a few months ago), who's going to use LN compared to on-chain?

It's a self-regulating system (just like the hashing difficulty). There's nothing to worry about.

[philipma1957]

Nope , you are wrong . If someone has enough liquidity can transact infinitely in LN without closing it's channel/s . In what way that person supports the miners ? On the contrary , with a very small investment , LN nodes work like parasites that suck fees from the true backbone of the system , that has cost billions of investment . Imagine if all transactions move to LN , and miners just wait to be paid from opening and closing channel fees . How would that be sustainable ?

That will never happen.

It will take decades to open channels for 8 billion people (assuming all transactions are LN-related, which they aren't, since we also have Ordinals and other stuff).

Besides, BTC uses a free market system to determine fees: https://mempool.space/

If fees drop again to 4 cents per TX (it happened a few months ago), who's going to use LN compared to on-chain?

It's a self-regulating system (just like the hashing difficulty). There's nothing to worry about.

As long as the top five pools do not blacklist all tx under 50 sats a byte.

Fuck if I was a CEO  of one of  the top five pools I would try to do an Opec oil type group and set min trans action at 50 sats just to see what the market does.

https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/pools

Summary of Mined Blocks

Miner / Pool--------Percent

Foundry USA-------33.333%

AntPool-------------22.337%

F2Pool--------------13.574%

Binance Pool--------9.794%

ViaBTC--------------8.419%

total of ----------- over 87.2%

If they blacklist all tx under 50 sats a byte it would be some real fun.

I have to think they will try it.

[larry_vw_1955]

Fuck if I was a CEO  of one of  the top five pools I would try to do an Opec oil type group and set min trans action at 50 sats just to see what the market does.

Time to fork bitcoin.  

If they blacklist all tx under 50 sats a byte it would be some real fun.

fun for who exactly? not normal users. they would hate that. just what we need some overlord setting our fees.

I have to think they will try it.

They might be forced to do that. If block rewards get so small and they can't make enough off them then they might have to raise the bar  even if it means just mining empty blocks to shut out people trying to submit transactions at a cheaper rate through smaller miners...

That doesn't seem like a nice thing to do but this is business.

Indeed it's not exponential, but in long run it'll make time for initial block download become far longer.

far longer or just longer? but isn't there a train of thought that says bitcoin blocks have a maximum size of 4MB so we should just say the blockchain grows at that rate every 10 minutes and adjust your ssd purchases accordingly? isn't that a reasonable expectation rather than to become upset or negative if it happens to not use less than that maximum as often? 4MB is the worst it can get. adjusting our ssd purchases accordingly is the solution. the solution is not to criticize bitcoin for using what it is allowed to.

oh and by the way, in case people haven't noticed, ssd prices have been plumetting.