Bitcoin Ordinals on the edge of getting canceled

[NotATether]

OP, you have to lock this topic, because it's factually incorrect and it's going to give people false hope about the mempool situation being resolved quickly.

I just did an interview with DL News they asked me for, so it will be beneficial to get the facts out here for all to see.

Code:

------- Original Message -------
On Wednesday, May 10th, 2023 at 6:52 PM, Ali Sherief <ali@notatether.com> wrote:


> Hi <blank>, I hope you still have time. I had Do Not Disturb switched on before I got here.
> 
> 
> > What are Bitcoin devs looking to do about the fee spike caused by Ordinals clogging up the mempool?
> 
> At the moment, nothing has been agreed upon yet. In situations like these where there is something significant at stake, there is usually a lot of dialogue about possible solutions to take. However, before enacting on any particular decision, a majority consensus among the participants isn't required, otherwise no action is taken.
> 
> 
> > Do you support Luke Dashjr’s calls to treat these transactions like spam and enact spam filtration as a bug fix?
> 
> I would like to make it clear that this is not the opinion held collectively by the developers.
> 
> I also think that's a bit extreme, when you consider that there's live money on top of these transactions, even if there is a tendency to consider them as spam.
> 
> > What sort of actions do you think are likely to be taken? Will they be bug fixes or changes to the core client in the next release?
> 
> I'm not expecting changes of this sort to be implemented until a consensus is reached like I told you. At the moment there are no Github issues or pull requests of this sort, and I'm not expecting any to appear in the immediate future.
> 
> 
> > What happens if miners are not on board with these changes? Are we going to see another Bitcoin civil war?
> 
> I actually think it is not necessary for miners to worry about this because in a way, BRC-20 token transactions are a lot similar to the Ethereum NFT craze in its heyday. I know that miners are profiting a lot from these BRC-20 transactions but it's only going to be temporary, because none of these have any use cases so it's only a matter of time before BRC-20 loses most of its hype just like Ethereum NFTs.
> 
> Regarding a civil war - it's actually already begun, but it does not involve developers or miners. It is restricted between Bitcoin users who support ordinals and the those who don't (as well as altcoin users who for some reason want to take sides), and additionally is also restricted to social media such as Twitter.
> 
> This is not particularly new, as this has also happened in 2017. But because miners were also involved, it was more serious.
> 
> Unfortunately that status quo is going to continue at least until the situation with the mempool is restored to normal.
> 
> 
> > Any action taken against ordinals could be seen as censorship. What are your views on this?
> 
> You are absolutely correct and that is why we have to be very careful when dealing with this issue. We already see various types of data transactions, for example OP_RETURN, and attempting to block them entirely after they have already been introduced will cast a negative image on Bitcoin, which we would like to avoid obviously.
> 
> 
> > What’s the long-term solution for Bitcoin’s security budget beyond block subsidies?
> 
> Profits for the miners have to come from the layer 1 fees as it is not possible to adjust ASICs to work with layer 2. Naturally, transaction fees will rise, probably to the level we are at now, but by then I hope there's is better adoption of the Lightning Network.
> 
> The key problem with LN is the lack of software using it. AFAIK there are only two desktop wallets (Electrum and Zap) that support Lightning. Mobile wallet support is good though.
> 
> Almost nothing supports the Taro protocol made by Lightning Labs though, but that has to change quickly because it is superior to BRC/ORC-20. BRC-20 author also recommends using Taro as an alternative, in the BRC-20 docs.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Ali
> 
> 
> Sent from Proton Mail for iOS
> 
> 
> On Wed, May 10, 2023 at 4:57 PM, <blank> wrote:
> 
> > Hello Ali,
> > 
> > I hope you are well.
> > 
> > My name is <blank> and I’m a reporter at DL News. I’m writing a story about ordinal inscriptions on Bitcoin and I’d like to get your perspective on the matter.
> > 
> > What are Bitcoin devs looking to do about the fee spike caused by Ordinals clogging up the mempool?
> > 
> > Do you support Luke Dashjr’s calls to treat these transactions like spam and enact spam filtration as a bug fix?
> > 
> > What sort of actions do you think are likely to be taken? Will they be bug fixes or changes to the core client in the next release?
> > 
> > What happens if miners are not on board with these changes? Are we going to see another Bitcoin civil war?
> > 
> > Any action taken against ordinals could be seen as censorship. What are your views on this?
> > 
> > What’s the long-term solution for Bitcoin’s security budget beyond block subsidies?
> > 
> > I look forward to hearing back from you.
> > 
> > I’ll be filing my article by 5:30 PM UTC (12:30 ET). I’d be grateful if you can get back to me by then.
> > 
> > Kind regards,
> > <blank>.

What I can say is on the edge of happening is that I have to step up my Lightning game. And probably a lot of other devs as well.

[CryptSafe]

If we are asked by the Bitcoin devs to vote and choose between allowing ordinals to keep doing their thing on Bitcoin or they should cancel ordinals what will you be voting for?  

What a question! I believe you to knows what to do in this case. You do not need anybody to tell you what to do immediately. Do you know what has happened within this few days this brc20 bot  launched on bitcoin chain network?
These kind of situations sometimes do not even need public opinion on to voting or not. What is required is just immediate actions to stop whatever that has been unleashed to cause that  backlogs.

Today I read a news on Twitter and it looks like the Bitcoin devs want to cancel ordinals

Canceling the ordinals protocol or whatever they call themselves is not a bad idea. It is what I called doing the needful to save the whole. If they decide to do take that decision so be it as it is for the benefit of all.
Please do well to reference or cite your source since you said you read from a news.

Also is it advisable to start receiving Bitcoin payment straight to your exchange? What disadvantages comes with doing so?

I do not really think there is any disadvantage attached though. It's only the network fee to pay if you can. Exchange are open to receiving payment but some you can not make withdrawal at the moment.  It is only just the backlog of payments onchain currently. My friend informed me that he received a payment that was  made since four days ago as a result of the backlog and transaction fees. The delay is damned obvious.

[serveria.com]

If we are asked by the Bitcoin devs to vote and choose between allowing ordinals to keep doing their thing on Bitcoin or they should cancel ordinals what will you be voting for?  

Today I read a news on Twitter and it looks like the Bitcoin devs want to cancel ordinals



I am not sure if this have been confirmed yet or they are still trying to make a choice but I will like to hear your thoughts, a good move or a bad one?

Also is it advisable to start receiving Bitcoin payment straight to your exchange? What disadvantages comes with doing so?

That would be cool, but unfortunately the Luke guy is not a core dev. Let's just hope the devs will listen to him and finally do something about this ordinals plague.

[South Park]

That would be a great step taken by developers if they agree to cancel the ordinals because there isn't a need for such protocol in Bitcoin blockchain and it's just an extra burden on the blockchain. The useless tokens and NFT's have no place in the Bitcoin blockchain and developers should definitely take some actions to prevent those useless protocols.

snip

I agree, I mean if people want to keep investing on NFTs that is not my problem and they can do so if they want, however bitcoin should be a robust project which does a small number of things but that does them extremely well, let other coins to become the center of the universe for those which want to trade and create those tokens, bitcoin does not need them and without them the fees can once again become reasonable, and transactions can become something you can do whenever you need them and not something you need to plan weeks in advance.

[rdbase]

I vote that we should stop the ordinals. Id even vote to move their rotten, useless transactions onto a side chain if that was possible, but I don't see how that could be done.

Move it via a soft fork as someone suggested on the multiple discussions about this since it's inception.
Something such as a pepe or a dogechain.
Saylor on a podcast earlier today didn't help much in keeping the blockchain ordinal-free either.

[pixie85]

I vote that we should stop the ordinals. Id even vote to move their rotten, useless transactions onto a side chain if that was possible, but I don't see how that could be done.

the ordinal should be stopped immediately, there is no reason to support its development, it will only destroy the bitcoin ecosystem, inserting files every sats is the idea of people who fail to find buyers in their trash NFT.

Bullshit, it's not going to destroy anything.
There's a number of scared people who are now spreading FUD about how bitcoin network is proven to be weak and damaged and ordinals are a proof of it. These people are playing into the hands of CSW who was saying that for years and trying to shove SV down our throats. Are you a part of his team?

Devs enabled taproot and are now backtracking, thinking if it maybe was a bad idea and should be censored. So what is it? Do they know what the changes they apply to bitcoin actually do or not?

[franky1]

OP, you have to lock this topic, because it's factually incorrect and it's going to give people false hope about the mempool situation being resolved quickly.

I just did an interview with DL News they asked me for, so it will be beneficial to get the facts out here for all to see.

What I can say is on the edge of happening is that I have to step up my Lightning game. And probably a lot of other devs as well.

in short you want to abandon fixing bitcoin bugs and waste time fixing LN flaws and hope everyone moves over to LN... shameful
oh im pigeon holing you back in the idiot camp along with doomad and his troops again

you do realise that LN has a liquidity issue right. its not something devs will ever solve to make LN function like bitcoin does. LN will always be a system for the penny pincher small value stuff. no design change will make LN handle bitcoin traffic

but you will learn the hard way.. in i expect another 10 years of delay to scaling while everyone waits for the promises of devs.. see you then

also funny how your commits to bitcoin core are very very limited (adding a print statement to a log script) yet you want to tell media an opinion as if your the dev spokesperson.. sounds to me you are trying to push a narrative that nothing should be done to bitcoin and everyones only hope is another sub-par broken network that cant handle bitcoin value amounts.. seems you have gone full anti-bitcoin pro altnet

[darkangel11]

I believe that it's something that can fix itself on its own, without anybody coming in and trying to block ordinals. They're useless and it's only a matter of time before those who pull the strings of all these useless tokens cash out, the way Vitalik is cashing out on ETH and the Ripple Foundation is cashing out on XRP, and so on. The main difference is that the mentioned coins can actually be used to transact, pepe the frog and his friends have no purpose. They exist because they can and people are buying them because they think they can outsmart the devs and other greedy investors and run away with some money.

A year from now you'll open a chart in front of you and all these attacks will be small red candles on the big long time line of bitcoin, nothing more, just like Silk Road, hash wars, Covid19, and all the rest of them.

I say leave ordinals as is and watch the crowd go crazy, the way they were going crazy after pictures of apes and penguins. Remember that some of these people, who are now paying $100 to send a few satoshi, were buying coins like Bitcoin God for $50 just because it included the b word and Luna for $100 because some Korean guy said it's going to be backed by bitcoin. These people were also paying millions of dollars for pictures that a child could make in MS Paint.

[BitDane]

I am really thinking the advantage of having Bitcoin Ordinals in the network.   I think it is much better to work on the scalability of the network.  This Bitcoin ordinals attack is just an example how not ready the Bitcoin network is to handle a sudden spike in transactions thus in case of massive adoption, we might experience the same thing.

I do agree that this NFT craze will eventually calm down and this tx fee spike and network congestion will come back to normal soon.  I think the developer should take the current situation a challenge to upgrade the scalability of Bitcoin network so that this kind of attack will be useless in the future.

[NotATether]

in short you want to abandon fixing bitcoin bugs and waste time fixing LN flaws and hope everyone moves over to LN... shameful

Look, keep your well-documented grudges about Lightning Network out of this issue as they're not going to help anyone.

also funny how your commits to bitcoin core are very very limited (adding a print statement to a log script) yet you want to tell media an opinion as if your the dev spokesperson.. sounds to me you are trying to push a narrative that nothing should be done to bitcoin and everyones only hope is another sub-par broken network that cant handle bitcoin value amounts.. seems you have gone full anti-bitcoin pro altnet

Oh my involvement in Core is more than filing PRs and anyone with half a brain can see that there is no message in the email list saying that "Core developers will do this or that", so it's natural to say nothing has been agreed.

Bitcoin is decentralized and your post is trying to imply that there's some sort of closed cartel that works on Bitcoin which is false. You're acting just like those ETH idiots on Twitter I keep having to debunk who claim a one-man army is about to kill Ordinals, so stop doing that.

They asked me for my opinion, not the other way around. Is that a problem to you?

[franky1]

in short you want to abandon fixing bitcoin bugs and waste time fixing LN flaws and hope everyone moves over to LN... shameful

Look, keep your well-documented grudges about Lightning Network out of this issue as they're not going to help anyone.

also funny how your commits to bitcoin core are very very limited (adding a print statement to a log script) yet you want to tell media an opinion as if your the dev spokesperson.. sounds to me you are trying to push a narrative that nothing should be done to bitcoin and everyones only hope is another sub-par broken network that cant handle bitcoin value amounts.. seems you have gone full anti-bitcoin pro altnet

Oh my involvement in Core is more than filing PRs and anyone with half a brain can see that there is no message in the email list saying that "Core developers will do this or that", so it's natural to say nothing has been agreed.

Bitcoin is decentralized and your post is trying to imply that there's some sort of closed cartel that works on Bitcoin which is false. You're acting just like those ETH idiots on Twitter I keep having to debunk who claim a one-man army is about to kill Ordinals, so stop doing that.

They asked me for my opinion, not the other way around. Is that a problem to you?

they asked for YOUR opinion, yet your response was acting as if you speak for the entire devs and community.

and if you read not just twitter. but look at many many discussion platforms(non social drama types) you will see its not a one man army wanting to kill ordinals.

by the way. that super_testnet scam pretending to kill ordinal with the mis-count. is just another scam of requesting 10ksat be spent to spam the network.. so dont include that as a viable ordinal killer. its actually adding to the ordinal spam and fee mania

but hey your reverting to the old scripts of thinking "one man army", defend the devs, kiss ass, promote other networks

but how about look at the many topics of thousands of people peed off by the shit
the many discussions of many people wanting devs to get off their ass
and as for LN
many people have moved off LN.. many more already see the flaws without using it.
in the last 3 month the liquidity of LN has not increased
yet other subnetwork bridges of locked btc value have more liquidity than LN. so stop trying to sell a broken system by saying no one wants to fix bitcoin

you are pretty much saying there is an exploit no one wants to fix.. and the only salvation is another system (thats also broke)..
im guessing within the next week you will be saying core devs had no influence, consequence, causation of this exploit and you will want to point blame at asic owners.. becasue that seems to be the next script your forum brotheren of the same mantra have got to so far

not good advice you are offering, but it does sound more like a paid saleman

[NotATether]

they asked for YOUR opinion

And I gave them my opinion + already known facts. idgaf if you think they sound too much like "community opinion".

and if you read not just twitter. but look at many many discussion platforms(non social drama types) you will see its not a one man army wanting to kill ordinals.

The one-man army was a fabrication created by other news articles and disgruntled Tweeters that wanted to vilify Luke dashjr for his single-email opine about the issue. So naturally that accusation had to be rubbished by someone.

not good advice you are offering, but it does sound more like a paid saleman

I did not receive any commission for commenting.

[Minhxx]

The problem with paying with bitcoin lies in the high cost. It is not suitable for small head houses. Gas costs are many times higher than other altcoins, you also slow down your assets when gas fees are too high

[BenCodie]

If we are asked by the Bitcoin devs to vote and choose between allowing ordinals to keep doing their thing on Bitcoin or they should cancel ordinals what will you be voting for?  

Today I read a news on Twitter and it looks like the Bitcoin devs want to cancel ordinals

snip

I am not sure if this have been confirmed yet or they are still trying to make a choice but I will like to hear your thoughts, a good move or a bad one?

I hope that they succeed....$5-$10 to send Bitcoin is not viable for anyone using it on a day to day basis to pay for day to day items. It is not even viable for $100-$200 transactions (PayPal is better than 2.5-10% at this stage). Ordinals in the way that they are being used now (essentially junk and spam) is not something worth keeping it. It's obviously for miner profit, and fueled by miners and brainless influencers. I hope that it's fixed (my opinion is that it's a good move if they're removed, or improved drastically).

One question that comes to mind is if the value of Ordinals from before their removal will rise exponentially and can still be transacted after it's removed?

Also is it advisable to start receiving Bitcoin payment straight to your exchange? What disadvantages comes with doing so?

No. The advantage is less fee (not having to forward yourself to an exchange) the disadvantage is that you do not know where the sender origin is coming from, which opens up some liability issues. Generally, it's not good practice. Using an exchange in general rather than P2P and decentralized platforms is bad practice.

[franky1]

One question that comes to mind is if the value of Ordinals from before their removal will rise exponentially and can still be transacted after it's removed?

the ordinal memes and json junk does not move. it sits appended to the end of tx data outside the signature proof of spending a utxo. thus its not tethered to any output of said tx.

in short ordinal memes and json junk never had the "proof of transfer" in the first place and anyone thinking their received something willl learn the hard way they never did. so no loss if ordinals is stopped. just an awakening that those that got scammed, got scammed before they realised they got scammed.

but hey the ordinal creator was hoping his scam would get stopped by bitcoin devs spo he can pretend it was bitcoin devs that lost his victims value. when the truth is the victims lost their value when they got scammed into buying wha they thought was a transfer of the dead weight data

[Kakmakr]

I think these types of applications should not run on the Bitcoin Blockchain, but rather on some side-chain. The developers can rather spend their time to develop something that can run on a side-chain, with minimal impact on the Bitcoin Blockchain.

At this moment things like this are putting too much unnecessary strain on the Blockchain and killing the utility capabilities of many other more useful applications of Bitcoin. 

[Abiky]

I vote that we should stop the ordinals. Id even vote to move their rotten, useless transactions onto a side chain if that was possible, but I don't see how that could be done.

We all want cheap fees and faster confirmation times on the BTC blockchain. But rejecting Ordinals would be no different than introducing censorship on the network. Isn't this what banks do? They freeze your transactions if they deem it suspicious or for other unknown reasons. Bitcoin is all about openess, decentralization, and equality, so we should let the community decide what's best for the cryptocurrency in the long run. Not a small number of developers working on the project.

If this turns out to be controversial, I'm afraid we'll be seeing a hard fork soon. Miners are earning lots of money with Ordinals inscriptions, so they will fork the chain if developers decide to block them. Let's see how everything will turn out to be in the following months. Just my opinion

[nutildah]

in short ordinal memes and json junk never had the "proof of transfer" in the first place

Of course they do. We've been over this many times yet you keep spreading misinformation about how it works. The transfer happens when the satoshi to which an inscription has been assigned moves from one address to another, which is easily verifiable. You're conflating the media file and the ordinal as being one in the same -- they're not, they don't have to be for the system to work.

The different thing about Ordinal NFTs compared to most other NFTs is they use the Bitcoin blockchain to store the media file rather than an external server. The association between media file and ordinal is established by the protocol, the same way it is for every single other NFT in existence.

And I already know how you're gonna respond: "But Casey could change the protocol at any time."

That's like saying "Vitalik could change the ERC721 token standard at any time."

It's not gonna happen and among the most mindless of weapons in the Ordinals FUD arsenal.

You: "But you're secretly invested in it and that's why you're arguing against me."

No, I'm arguing against you because you're wrong on a technical level, per usual.

There, saved us two steps in how this conversation would inevitably play out.

I think these types of applications should not run on the Bitcoin Blockchain, but rather on some side-chain. The developers can rather spend their time to develop something that can run on a side-chain, with minimal impact on the Bitcoin Blockchain.

At this moment things like this are putting too much unnecessary strain on the Blockchain and killing the utility capabilities of many other more useful applications of Bitcoin.  

Perhaps you're right but the prestige is having the inscription on L1 Bitcoin, immortalized forever in the world's oldest & strongest blockchain.

[kryptqnick]

I don't mind creative projects built on Blockchain, but there are plenty of chains to do it on. I don't understand why it has to be Bitcoin, the most trusted and perhaps most used as a currency crypto. Bitcoin isn't meant to be used for this purpose, and Ordinals are the likeliest cause of the recent fee spike. It's good that it's largely over, and it's not like a spike couldn't happen without them, but that's still undesirable. If ordinals get cancelled, I'll be happy. If this doesn't happen, I'll hope they die naturally due to the death of hype around them.

[Abiky]

I don't mind creative projects built on Blockchain, but there are plenty of chains to do it on. I don't understand why it has to be Bitcoin, the most trusted and perhaps most used as a currency crypto. Bitcoin isn't meant to be used for this purpose, and Ordinals are the likeliest cause of the recent fee spike. It's good that it's largely over, and it's not like a spike couldn't happen without them, but that's still undesirable. If ordinals get cancelled, I'll be happy. If this doesn't happen, I'll hope they die naturally due to the death of hype around them.

Ordinals may've been created in bad faith to destroy Bitcoin in the long run. Do you think if this was done in good faith, the creator would've already chosen a sidechain or the LN for Ordinals inscriptions? BTC was already struggling with high network load a few years ago, so why add more fuel to the fire?

I really hope TX fees decline to a point where using BTC as a currency becomes feasible again. Developers proposed to "cancel" Ordinals inscriptions, so let's see what the community thinks about it. I know miners won't be happy with such a decision, but we should be looking for the user's best interests. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has plenty of block space available, so why not move everything there instead? Just my opinion