(Ordinals) BRC-20 needs to be removed

[coolcoinz]

Lolz about the comments that WEF wants to attack btc . Conspiracy theorists can't even understand basic economics

I try to be unbiased, but just as we can't put all actions performed by world organizations and known lobbyists into one and the same basket labelled "attack on bitcoin" we also can't do the opposite and put them all in the basked labelled "conspiracy theories with no proof." 
The most basic rule of every investigator is that the person who benefited from the crime might be involved in it and there's a bunch of organizations that can benefit from destroying bitcioin. The list includes the WEF, World Bank and a number of central banks. Also, it would be profitable for all parties involved in trading gold and the ones involved in designing CBDCs.

[1714518757]

1714518757

[HmmMAA]

I try to be unbiased, but just as we can't put all actions performed by world organizations and known lobbyists into one and the same basket labelled "attack on bitcoin" we also can't do the opposite and put them all in the basked labelled "conspiracy theories with no proof."  
The most basic rule of every investigator is that the person who benefited from the crime might be involved in it and there's a bunch of organizations that can benefit from destroying bitcioin. The list includes the WEF, World Bank and a number of central banks. Also, it would be profitable for all parties involved in trading gold and the ones involved in designing CBDCs.

First of all , to decide if something is an attack from someone you have to look at the evidence . There's no evidence connecting any of those entities with the "destruction" of btc . If there's any kindly point me to it , i'd be more than happy to change my view if serious evidence exist .

Second , if no rules are broken why is it attack ? For more than 6 months that fees were low and inscriptions were made most btc'ers were mocking and no one was talking about an attack . Now that it affects their pockets it has become one ?  

I won't stand with opinions of people that bring nothing to the table other than pure imagination . And that's what cryptosize does , not to mention that he always avoids the obvious if it doesn't fit his narratives .

[joker_josue]

Second , if no rules are broken why is it attack ? For more than 6 months that fees were low and inscriptions were made most btc'ers were mocking and no one was talking about an attack . Now that it affects their pockets it has become one ?  

But one thing is certain and we have to recognize it.
Something is not normal, there are so many transactions in which the rate is equal to or greater than the value transacted. Even more abnormal is that there are so many people who are not able to wait 20~30 minutes to take advantage of a rate of 50sat/vB for the next block, to pay double for low value transactions.
But then, everyone does what they want with the money.

I once heard a thief say in a commentary on his life: "The money that is easiest to get is also the easiest to spend."
And fortunately, many who are in the Bitcoin universe have made a lot of money with little effort. Therefore, it is easy to spend it.

[pooya87]

Second , if no rules are broken why is it attack ?

The same reason why sending a million requests to a website's server per second is not technically breaking any rules but it is an attack.

For more than 6 months that fees were low and inscriptions were made most btc'ers were mocking and no one was talking about an attack . Now that it affects their pockets it has become one ? 

Just because you haven't seen it, that doesn't mean it didn't exist. We've been discussing this attack from the day it was created. Obviously regular users who don't deal with Bitcoin every day may not even be aware of the attack taking place and only find out about it when the severity of it has grown enough to affect them.

It's like that website that was being DDoS attacked for months but you only visited it after months to face the problems.

With that said, Ordinals is an attack because it is abusing Bitcoin which is a payment network not a cloud storage. Additionally this attack only became possible by finding and using an exploit in the protocol that was added through a past soft-fork.

[DooMAD]

With that said, Ordinals is an attack because it is abusing Bitcoin which is a payment network not a cloud storage.

2014 called and has questions about this statement.  Where were all your complaints then?  Are wedding vows in the blockchain an "attack", too?  

When I first read about people doing that, my reaction was "huh, that's kinda cool, I guess it's not just for money, it can do other stuff as well".  But now, almost a decade later, people seem to have suddenly decided against that outlook.  I'd argue, it's a bit late to be calling for it to stop now.  That ship has long since sailed.

Additionally this attack only became possible by finding and using an exploit in the protocol that was added through a past soft-fork.

Why do people keep saying this?  Embedding pictures and assorted crap was possible long before that.  Various crappy forkcoins which didn't implement that change are also full of images and junk.  There are numerous ways to embed arbitrary data into the chain.  And that's been the case since you first registered your account here.  You're at risk of beginning to sound like fruitloopfranky1 if you keep spreading misinformation like that.  Don't go off the deep-end like him, please.  

You could argue the softfork made it more cost-effective to fill the chain with crap, but it's a complete myth to say the softfork made it possible.

And the primary idea behind that fork is to improve throughput.  What's your alternative?  Would you rather developers didn't work on scaling Bitcoin at all anymore?  'Cause I hear a lot of bitching about this, but not much in the way of an alternative path to explore.  Tell you what, when you create a functional time machine, or crystal ball, and you can accurately predict in advance when someone is going to use new functionality in a way that was never intended, maybe then your critiques can serve an actual purpose.  

[coolcoinz]

First of all , to decide if something is an attack from someone you have to look at the evidence . There's no evidence connecting any of those entities with the "destruction" of btc . If there's any kindly point me to it , i'd be more than happy to change my view if serious evidence exist .

I did not say anything about destruction, but I do see signs of conspiracy. Bitcoin was not destroyed, and I can't with 100% certainty say that it's being attacked, but it's very probable that an attack is taking place. I could use your argumentation and ask you to show me evidence. Can you prove beyond doubt that there's no a attack?

The way I see it, something strange is happening because during the congestion people were willing to pay 10 times the fee needed for a first block confirmation and that wasn't 1 or 2 transactions where someone made a mistake. It was done on a hourly basis. Why would you pay $150 in transaction fees when $40 allowed for a first block transaction and $20 allowed you to get a confirmation in less than an hour? Since nothing happens without a reason and people usually don't like to throw money away, this was done to pump fees and congest the network. Who benefits from high network fees and news headlines telling people that bitcoin is stupid because it costs you $50 to pay while VISA fee is 2%?

[cryptosize]

With that said, Ordinals is an attack because it is abusing Bitcoin which is a payment network not a cloud storage.

2014 called and has questions about this statement.  Where were all your complaints then?  Are wedding vows in the blockchain an "attack", too?  

When I first read about people doing that, my reaction was "huh, that's kinda cool, I guess it's not just for money, it can do other stuff as well".  But now, almost a decade later, people seem to have suddenly decided against that outlook.  I'd argue, it's a bit late to be calling for it to stop now.  That ship has long since sailed.

Additionally this attack only became possible by finding and using an exploit in the protocol that was added through a past soft-fork.

Why do people keep saying this?  Embedding pictures and assorted crap was possible long before that.  Various crappy forkcoins which didn't implement that change are also full of images and junk.  There are numerous ways to embed arbitrary data into the chain.  And that's been the case since you first registered your account here.  You're at risk of beginning to sound like fruitloopfranky1 if you keep spreading misinformation like that.  Don't go off the deep-end like him, please.  

You could argue the softfork made it more cost-effective to fill the chain with crap, but it's a complete myth to say the softfork made it possible.

And the primary idea behind that fork is to improve throughput.  What's your alternative?  Would you rather developers didn't work on scaling Bitcoin at all anymore?  'Cause I hear a lot of bitching about this, but not much in the way of an alternative path to explore.  Tell you what, when you create a functional time machine, or crystal ball, and you can accurately predict in advance when someone is going to use new functionality in a way that was never intended, maybe then your critiques can serve an actual purpose.  

I'm curious to read your opinion about this:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5476162.msg63430508#msg63430508
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5476162.msg63430973#msg63430973

Freedom is nice and all, until it puts BTC into existential danger...

[pooya87]

2014 called and has questions about this statement.  Where were all your complaints then?  Are wedding vows in the blockchain an "attack", too? 

When I first read about people doing that, my reaction was "huh, that's kinda cool, I guess it's not just for money, it can do other stuff as well".  But now, almost a decade later, people seem to have suddenly decided against that outlook.  I'd argue, it's a bit late to be calling for it to stop now.  That ship has long since sailed.

There is a clear distinction here that I'm surprised you still don't want to see.

When a transaction is complying with consensus rules, standard rules and is behaving the way it is expected it is different from a transaction that is complying with consensus rules but not standard rules or the expected behavior.

In this case using the OP_RETURN output that is the expected way of inserting a teeny tiny arbitrary data into the bitcoin blockchain is a normal behavior.
On the other hand, using the oversight in witness verification to inject arbitrary size arbitrary data into the bitcoin blockchain is not normal or expected behavior hence it is an attack.

Edit: another major difference I forgot to mention is the fact that OP_RETURN outputs that are expected behavior can be pruned from UTXO database while the Ordinals spam which is an exploit keeps growing the UTXO database with dust outputs.

Embedding pictures and assorted crap was possible long before that.

Possible? Not exactly. You see there is a difference between a valid transaction and a possible transaction (something that is easily relayed and mined).
It has always been "valid" to for example create an output that has a ~1 MB script containing arbitrary data but it was never possible to propagate that or get a miner to confirm it easily.

There are numerous ways to embed arbitrary data into the chain.

And they are all extremely limited and controlled to prevent abuse and attacks such as Ordinals.

And that's been the case since you first registered your account here.

Wrong. It has been like that since long before that

You're at risk of beginning to sound like fruitloopfranky1 if you keep spreading misinformation like that.  Don't go off the deep-end like him, please. 

Feel free to prove me wrong.

Create a legacy transaction that injects a large arbitrary data inside one script by using the same script as the Ordinals Attack and get majority of full nodes to accept that tx in their mempool and all miners to include it in their candid block without you contacting them behind curtains and paying an extra fee through another channel to get it "manually" included.
Now do the same using witness version 1 and see for yourself whether it has always been possible or not!

And the primary idea behind that fork is to improve throughput.  What's your alternative?  Would you rather developers didn't work on scaling Bitcoin at all anymore?

Now you're changing the topic of discussing entirely.

You seem to have talked to franky so much so that you see everything about SegWit as a whole. The problem is not the soft-fork(s), nor is it SegWit itself. We aren't even discussing SegWit version 0 and 1 here.
The problem is the oversight that left some rules "loose" and enabled this attack vector which Ordinals is exploiting to perform their attack.
The solution was simple too, all it took was including the same exact rules that existed in Bitcoin into the witness verification rules to continue preventing this type of abusive attacks.

[DooMAD]

And the primary idea behind that fork is to improve throughput.  What's your alternative?  Would you rather developers didn't work on scaling Bitcoin at all anymore?

Now you're changing the topic of discussing entirely.

(...)

The problem is the oversight that left some rules "loose" and enabled this attack vector which Ordinals is exploiting to perform their attack.

The two points are linked.  Scaling generally requires extensible code.  If you make it too rigid, there's nowhere to grow.  If you want a dinky little bonsai tree, then sure, strict and disciplined is the way to go.  But we need something bigger than a bonsai tree, here.

If you propose painting ourselves into a corner, development-wise, but the devs have other ideas on that matter, guess what the outcome is going to be.

It's all building blocks.  Incremental steps to better things.  Try not to let this incident cloud the big picture.

[joker_josue]

Another point that cannot be forgotten is this aspect mentioned here:

Is there any visible (not encrypted or external link) pedo pr0n jpeg in the BTC blockchain?

If so, all BTC nodes are illegal by definition.

Unfortunately, there are already much worse things on the Bitcoin blockchain:
Child abuse imagery found within bitcoin's blockchain (The Guardian)

I don't even want to imagine what a lot of Ordinals that have been moving/registered have...

So I guess it's illegal to have a BTC full node... I wonder why the authorities have done nothing about it.

It's because you can't easily access an illegal JPEG from pre-Ordinals days from the blockchain.

It's one thing for criminals to use bitcoin as financial resources for their crimes. Another is to turn bitcoin itself into a crime tool.

Is this what we want for the Bitcoin blockchain?

[pooya87]

The two points are linked.  Scaling generally requires extensible code.  If you make it too rigid, there's nowhere to grow.  If you want a dinky little bonsai tree, then sure, strict and disciplined is the way to go.  But we need something bigger than a bonsai tree, here.

If you propose painting ourselves into a corner, development-wise, but the devs have other ideas on that matter, guess what the outcome is going to be.

It's all building blocks.  Incremental steps to better things.  Try not to let this incident cloud the big picture.

Forward compatibility is a good thing and it has always been part and parcel of Bitcoin protocol. But there is a difference between leaving the protocol open for future improvements (like what we have in witness version 2+ or OP codes like OP_SUCCESS, etc.) and leaving the protocol wide open to abuse (like the removal of consensus critical script size restriction from Taproot and not even making it a standard rule, etc.).

The exploit used in the Ordinals Attack is proof of that distinction.

[vjudeu]

Why do people keep saying this?

Because of some limits, which were lifted in the source code: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5340900

Embedding pictures and assorted crap was possible long before that.

It was possible, but it was more expensive than today, if you compare the space needed for that.

What's your alternative?

An alternative was to keep that limit, and raise it, when there will be a need to do so. Which means, it could be valid, but non-standard. Ordinals gave us so much trouble, because they are standard transactions (and for that reason, some people downgraded their nodes to reject all Taproot transactions, which halted some transitions into Taproot, which I planned before, because now those address types are rejected by some nodes).

Would you rather developers didn't work on scaling Bitcoin at all anymore?

Why do you think that raising the limit, and making it standard, when it will be needed, would be worse? It doesn't have to be there from the start. The same with OP_SUCCESS: now, if you want to make a contract, where some part of the TapScript is hidden, you have to require an additional proof, that it contains no OP_SUCCESS opcodes. Why OP_SUCCESS is not "non-standard"?

when you create a functional time machine, or crystal ball, and you can accurately predict in advance when someone is going to use new functionality in a way that was never intended

You don't need a crystal ball:

1. Block size limit: set to 1 MB. People reached that.
2. Witness limit: 4 MB. People reached that.
3. Transaction size limit: 100 kB (for witness: 400 kB). People reached that.
4. Sigops limit: 20,000 (for witness: 80,000). People reached that.

If you put "no limits" somewhere, then you can expect, that it will be abused, and then you can expect, that other limits will be the only reason, why your system will not explode.

If you make it too rigid, there's nowhere to grow.

You can leave some space for future rules. But why do you want to make it standard? Imagine, how better it would be, if Ordinals would be possible, but non-standard.

And if you think that lifting some rules is good, then why Segwit v2, v3, and so on, are non-standard, and were not lifted as well?

[cryptosize]

This thread might be of interest to some here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36119042

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!

Very interesting remark...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution

"The aim of the colour revolutions was to establish Western-style liberal democracy in those countries"

[DooMAD]

Why do people keep saying this?

Because of some limits, which were lifted in the source code: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5340900

Yeah, I remember reading that topic around June time when gmaxwell posted.  It sounded very much as though devs had their reasons for doing this and I was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt.  But the prevailing view now appears to be that those reasons weren't sufficient.  

If you're all quite certain that:

a) plugging this loophole isn't going to jeopardise future scaling efforts

and

b) doing so doesn't set a precedent for future attack vectors where governments or regulators can successfully pressure devs into imposing stricter limits in order to deny transactions *they* don't like (because that could swiftly kill the entire project if we're not careful),

then perhaps I could be convinced to get on board with what people are suggesting.  I still urge extreme caution, though.  Do not leave the door wide open to governments and regulators to enact pressure on devs purely because people seem unable to look beyond the tx fees.  To say that the implications are potentially significant if people are wrong about this feels like an understatement.  

[vjudeu]

It sounded very much as though devs had their reasons for doing this

The reason was quite simple: developers were just tired of constant soft-forks, and they wanted to activate something "for the future", to avoid doing yet another soft-fork in the future. Is it a good reason? In my opinion not, because it is better to lift those limits with a new soft-fork, and not here and now, leaving the protocol wide open for making standard transactions in that way.

And, as you can recently noticed, in the latest version of Bitcoin Core 26.0, rules for regtest, testnet, and signet, were tightened to allow only standard transactions by default, and allow non-standard ones, only if the node operator explicitly change that.

plugging this loophole isn't going to jeopardise future scaling efforts

Of course not. There is a reason, why transactions could be non-standard, but still valid. And this is the way, how the protocol can be expanded, and historically, it was done in that way.

doing so doesn't set a precedent for future attack vectors where governments or regulators can successfully pressure devs into imposing stricter limits in order to deny transactions *they* don't like

This is debatable, and for that reason, there is no consensus for blocking the Ordinals entirely, by some kind of soft-fork. Because now, this is the only way, that would block them sufficiently. All those relay rules could suffice, when there was no software, that allowed Ordinals by default. But now, if you block them in some future version, then some people will simply not upgrade their clients. And now, you have the opposite: there is a minority, that tries to use downgraded clients, and unofficial ones, to block as much Ordinals, as they can. So, whatever will be done, some group will be disappointed.

And because the history is set in stone, then I think at this point, Ordinals should not be blocked. Instead, regular users should get some tools, to join their payments, to compete with Ordinals. Because it is easier to compress a lot of regular payments, than a lot of Ordinals (which could be compressed, if they would be turned into commitments, but this is not the goal of those users, as they explicitly want to always reveal everything on-chain, which means, they will sooner or later hit some barriers of data compression).

[pooya87]

and they wanted to activate something "for the future", to avoid doing yet another soft-fork in the future.

That sounds like a paradox, like having your cake and eating it too. To activate something means changing the consensus rules and that requires a fork and that fork could apply the previous needed changes too

[HmmMAA]

The same reason why sending a million requests to a website's server per second is not technically breaking any rules but it is an attack.

Even if you are a techy guy you seem to fail to understand that you are comparing different things . If i'm a legit user of a website i won't try to send 1 million requests per second . That's a DDos attack , and it's purpose is to take down a website and have a gain by either ransoms or financial gain for a competitor .
If 1 million customers per second were trying to use that website to buy stuff that can't be consider an attack , that website would be more than happy to upgrade it's infrastructure and maximize it's profits . Imagine if facebook or netflix or banks were calling an attack the use of their networks by millions of users . Wouldn't you laugh at them ?
That's the problem here , currently there are thousands of customers that want to use btc's chain because they see an opportunity . Btc has ruled that the ones that pay higher fees are eligible to enter their transactions faster in a block that it's capacity should be limited to be as valuable as it gets . If the fee model is flawed by default ( at least from my point of view ) then that's not making those willing to pay the price attackers . It's like the example of 1 million customers per second i gave above , the logical would be to upgrade the infrastructure . But , guys like you , now understand how wrong were they sticking to 1 MB limit and scarce block space and just try to blame others . Your magical solution of L2 doesn't work , and you're looking for enemies . What would happen if tomorrow morning 100 million users decided to use btc for their everyday needs transacting in a way proper of how you think network should work ? Would you call them attackers too ? In your sense everyone that's not using LN is an attacker , that's the problem .

Just because you haven't seen it, that doesn't mean it didn't exist. We've been discussing this attack from the day it was created. Obviously regular users who don't deal with Bitcoin every day may not even be aware of the attack taking place and only find out about it when the severity of it has grown enough to affect them.

It's like that website that was being DDoS attacked for months but you only visited it after months to face the problems.

With that said, Ordinals is an attack because it is abusing Bitcoin which is a payment network not a cloud storage. Additionally this attack only became possible by finding and using an exploit in the protocol that was added through a past soft-fork.

As i explained above you are the one that doesn't understand that this not an attack , it's a result of your premise that there should be a fee market and a limited scarce blocksize . You want a network that works on your needs , where full nodes decide how network will work . Well , from what i see , your full node that i guess is rejecting any "non-standard transaction" doesn't play any part on how blocks are building . Maybe it's time to understand how PoW consensus really works ?

[joker_josue]

As i explained above you are the one that doesn't understand that this not an attack , it's a result of your premise that there should be a fee market and a limited scarce blocksize . You want a network that works on your needs , where full nodes decide how network will work . Well , from what i see , your full node that i guess is rejecting any "non-standard transaction" doesn't play any part on how blocks are building . Maybe it's time to understand how PoW consensus really works ?

It really cannot be considered an attack, directly. But, this does not mean that it cannot be used as a tool for less-intentioned people to achieve their goals, which are less favorable for the network.

I'll give you an example, which happened yesterday. On prime-time TV, there was a report on the success of some companies in my country. When trying to access 2 or 3 websites of these companies, the websites were not prepared for so many visits and did not work correctly. I believe that the attention the report received led people to research the subject. But what guarantee is there that competing companies were not taking advantage of the moment to harm? Of course I'm just speculating, and I know that's not what happened. But, it could happen.

What I mean by this is that despite what is happening, it is not exactly an attack. It can be used to achieve certain purposes that are purely personal and not for the good of the network.

It has already been mentioned in other topics that if two or three large mining pools align themselves, they can achieve "ordinal" transactions with the sole purpose of increasing fees. Because in the end, they will always win, as the fees they are paying are for themselves.

[vjudeu]

That sounds like a paradox, like having your cake and eating it too.

1. It is not that surprising, if you remember, how people argued about activation method for each soft-fork. It is still unclear, what exactly should be used, and with each soft-fork, there are the same problems. So, some people tried to code it in a way, where it would no longer be needed.

2. There were some posts on mailing list, which presented, how to achieve some features, by using long and complex scripts. By making it standard, it is now possible to test it in a standard way. But of course, it would be better, if that kind of testing would happen on any kind of testnet, and then would be standardized on mainnet.

3. Taproot was advertized as "self-upgradable". And some rules were relaxed, to switch features on and off at will. And it would be fine, as long as there would be less people smart enough, to misuse that. Which means, it was also some kind of test: "can we relax the rules, and use it to activate features in the future?". And Ordinals gave developers the answer: no, you cannot, it will be abused. So now, the decision is to put some limits back, and for example relay only standard transactions, even in test networks. And if Ordinals will keep abusing the chain, then next steps would be needed. Some of them are in progress, for example simplifications in Initial Blockchain Download, and I hope they would be enough, to discourage people, to store their data on-chain, if it will turn out, that more nodes will be bootstrapped in a new way, or will simply stop storing that data, and will focus instead on proofs, that they are just signed correctly, without knowing the content.

[pooya87]

If 1 million customers per second were trying to use that website to buy stuff
Imagine if facebook or netflix or banks were calling an attack the use of their networks by millions of users . Wouldn't you laugh at them ?
That's the problem here , currently there are thousands of customers that want to use btc's chain because they see an opportunity .

It is you who is comparing apples and oranges. In your both examples you used legitimate use cases of the service (buying stuff, users of Facebook, etc.) but when it comes to Bitcoin you are counting the attackers as legitimate use case!

Every system is made for a purpose and when you use it for something else or break the rules of that system, your actions would be counted as abuse. For example if you use your Facebook account to post some random stuff every 10 seconds, your account will be banned and nuked in matter of minutes.
It's the same in Bitcoin, when you try to exploit the protocol and turn Bitcoin into cloud storage, that's an abuse and it should be banned. The only difference between Bitcoin and a centralized service is that Bitcoin is decentralized so such decision makings are extremely slow.

not making those willing to pay the price attackers

As I've said a million times this is not about fees nor about what is being stored in chain. This is all about the fact that Bitcoin is being used as cloud storage whereas it is supposed to be a payment system. And it is ONLY possible through an EXPLOIT.

But , guys like you , now understand how wrong were they sticking to 1 MB limit...
.... it's a result of your premise that there should be a fee market and a limited scarce blocksize .

That's just outright wrong.
Ignoring the fact that block size hasn't been 1MB for years, for some reason you said all these stuff in previous pages to get here (I wonder what reason ) to say that "people using bitcoin as their cloud storage is OK and we should increase the block size so they can have access to a bigger "cloud space" for their arbitrary data!"