Finally Bitcoin Devolpers planning to kill Ordinals and Inscription

[FinneysTrueVision]

Bitcoin Knots makes up less than half a percent of active Bitcoin nodes and the only pool using it for mining also has minuscule hashrate. This won't put an effective end to Ordinals but there is widespread agreement that these types of transactions are considered spam so it's possible we might see Bitcoin Core make similar changes. It will also depend on whether mining pools adopt this policy to filter spam transactions.

Earlier this year Monero adopted a similar change after the Monero Ordinals Project was created. For a blockchain as popular as Bitcoin, with many competing interests, I expect there will be a lot more pushback. Some will argue that it's a slippery slope that can lead to other types of transactions not being accepted. Miners could also object and say that higher fees are good for network security.

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[pooya87]

So let's say we eliminate this "exploit". There is nothing stopping the whole ordinals thing from moving to a different way to encode their data in the blockchain. You can encode data within public keys themselves, which makes it indistinguishable from random data. Here's a Counterparty based project transaction which encodes data as bare multi-sig outputs: https://mempool.space/tx/ee9ed76fa2318deb63a24082a8edc73e4ea39a5252bfb1c1e1c02bd02c52f95f. This method takes up even more space than the current method being used by ordinals, so this would make spam better, not worse.

Do we just keep banning "exploits" until only transactions we deem appropriate are allowed? That sounds like censorship to me.

Well, just because we can't eliminate all forms of abuse and patch all vulnerabilities, it does not mean we should not try to fix the fixable parts of the protocol where it is vulnerable and is being exploited.

With that said, other methods of abusing bitcoin are already facing a lot of limitations making them inefficient ways of spamming the network in comparison to the Ordinals exploit that is basically facing only one limit which is the block weight and is so much cheaper.

[hatshepsut93]

It's time to update the rules to remove the unproductive nuisance that is driving the fees up for all users.

I agree that ordinals are unproductive nuisance. However, I also think centralized exchanges are unproductive nuisance, and they spam the mempool with huge consolidation transactions all the time. Can we remove them?

Centralized exchanges and other entities are a natural part of the Bitcoin ecosystem, so it's not a spam.

And what about dust attacks? Why haven't we removed them yet? Surely everyone agrees they are spam?

Dust attacks are not profitable, so they don't clog the network as bad as ordinals do. In their case the fee market is doing a good job at preventing them from disrupting the core use case - sending money.

What about things like Counterparty, Stacks, or RSK? Surely they are all spam as well? And should we ban OP_RETURN outputs while we are at it?

Well if they were as popular and problematic as ordianls, they should have been treated as a bug too. Bitcoin is not Ethereum, it should be a network for money transferring, not for creating digital assets out of thin air.

"Unproductive nuisance" is subjective. I complete agree ordinals are unproductive nuisance, but we should not be dictating how other people are and are not allowed to use bitcoin.

Bitcoin's only function should be sending money, and we shouldn't dictate how people send money, but I see no reasons why we shouldn't disable the possibility of transactions that in their nature are not about transferring money but do something else, like creating and operating with tokens.

[Silberman]

Bitcoin Knots makes up less than half a percent of active Bitcoin nodes and the only pool using it for mining also has minuscule hashrate. This won't put an effective end to Ordinals but there is widespread agreement that these types of transactions are considered spam so it's possible we might see Bitcoin Core make similar changes. It will also depend on whether mining pools adopt this policy to filter spam transactions.

Earlier this year Monero adopted a similar change after the Monero Ordinals Project was created. For a blockchain as popular as Bitcoin, with many competing interests, I expect there will be a lot more pushback. Some will argue that it's a slippery slope that can lead to other types of transactions not being accepted. Miners could also object and say that higher fees are good for network security.

What we have here is a clash of visions about what bitcoin should be, with one side thinking that even if Ordinals are an eyesore they should be allowed even if sometimes they inconveniences the rest of the users, while on the other side we have those that believe bitcoin should concentrate on just doing a few things and do them well, and if that excludes Ordinals so be it, and while both sides have their good points I lean more towards the latter, since I think anyone that wants to create some tokens can use any other network which was created with that express purpose and leave bitcoin alone.

[DooMAD]

Well, just because we can't eliminate all forms of abuse and patch all vulnerabilities, it does not mean we should not try to fix the fixable parts of the protocol where it is vulnerable and is being exploited.

Even when we're already seeing cases of collateral damage?  Purely financial transactions are currently being impacted on the Bitcoin network because LukeJr is trying to create a hostile environment for non-financial transactions.  If you try to make more things 'non-standard', it has significant consequences for legitimate use-cases as well.  If you don't recognise the danger when when you're watching it unfold right In front of you, then I have to question what's wrong with your brain?

[Medusah]

We, the users.

No, we do not.  We never did.  This is not a majority-decides-what-to-censor type of network, it is a censorship resistant.  Period.  I do not care about any transaction beyond mine.

Bitcoin wasn't created to make some abstract "transactions", it was created to transfer monetary value, not some made-up tokens.

What is the big deal with allowing a fraction of the block space to be used for abstract transactions?  You are not paying for them.  You are just keeping them in your disk space, like the rest of the transactions.

Centralized exchanges and other entities are a natural part of the Bitcoin ecosystem, so it's not a spam.

How was it called in the whitepaper?  Peer-to-peer something.

Giving up custody of your coins to third parties is not a natural part of the Bitcoin ecosystem. 

[serveria.com]

No, we do not.  We never did.  This is not a majority-decides-what-to-censor type of network, it is a censorship resistant.  Period.  I do not care about any transaction beyond mine.

In this case, the majority is clearly AGAINST monkey pics, only retarded token creators/buyers support them. And miners, for obvious reasons. 

What is the big deal with allowing a fraction of the block space to be used for abstract transactions?  You are not paying for them.  You are just keeping them in your disk space, like the rest of the transactions.

Yes, but we came to the point when "abstract transactions" are allowing a fraction of the block space to be used for legit transactions! In fact, they're not! They're using up 120% of mempool themselves. 

How was it called in the whitepaper?  Peer-to-peer something.

Giving up custody of your coins to third parties is not a natural part of the Bitcoin ecosystem. 

Perhaps, but they're not causing chaos on the blockchain by ddosing the shit out of it and they actually serve some purpose.

[ABCbits]

I'm very disappointed in people who still insist on using the misleading term "censorship" to describe "preventing an exploit in the protocol".

What is the exploit?  Storing arbitrary data in blockchain?  But that is possible by encoding it in public keys and through other means.  

Storing arbitrary data in public keys and other means usually is far more costly than using witness data though, which discourage many people from doing it.

Bitcoin Knots makes up less than half a percent of active Bitcoin nodes and the only pool using it for mining also has minuscule hashrate. This won't put an effective end to Ordinals but there is widespread agreement that these types of transactions are considered spam so it's possible we might see Bitcoin Core make similar changes. It will also depend on whether mining pools adopt this policy to filter spam transactions.

I have doubt Bitcoin Core would do something like that. And FWIW mining pool probably use their custom full node software.
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[pooya87]

Well, just because we can't eliminate all forms of abuse and patch all vulnerabilities, it does not mean we should not try to fix the fixable parts of the protocol where it is vulnerable and is being exploited.

Even when we're already seeing cases of collateral damage?  Purely financial transactions are currently being impacted on the Bitcoin network because LukeJr is trying to create a hostile environment for non-financial transactions.  If you try to make more things 'non-standard', it has significant consequences for legitimate use-cases as well.  If you don't recognise the danger when when you're watching it unfold right In front of you, then I have to question what's wrong with your brain?

If by collateral damage you mean the tweet you shared in your other post[1], I can't tell how that is related to preventing the Ordinals spam by patching the exploit because it seems like a mining pool refused to mine a CoinJoin transaction which is an entirely different discussion specially since they are arguing over the weird limit their pool sets on OP_RETURN which is another unrelated matter here!!!

Other than that if you have an actual case of a "collateral damage" caused by preventing spammers (namely the Ordinals scammers) from exploiting the Bitcoin protocol, please share the actual case with the actual transaction so that we can analyze it and improve the preventing measures.

[1] https://nitter.cz/SamouraiWallet/status/1732584009442443336

[Medusah]

In this case, the majority is clearly AGAINST monkey pics, only retarded token creators/buyers support them. And miners, for obvious reasons.

So?  Censorship resistant as long as the majority is OK?  Lmao.

Perhaps, but they're not causing chaos on the blockchain by ddosing the shit out of it and they actually serve some purpose.

We have a very different understanding of DDoS.

Storing arbitrary data in public keys and other means usually is far more costly than using witness data though, which discourage many people from doing it.

It is also far more costly for the full node user.  Can you imagine the millions of permantly unspendable TXO?

[HmmMAA]

Nobody "subjectively" consider anything to be spam. It is spam because block space is being used for things that are not related to "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". This is Satoshi's description of what the system is, and introducing ways to inject more data into the blockchain for a variety of purposes will dimm the main purpose down until its just another shitcoin that only big companies can afford to run nodes.

Well , seems that you only read the title and not the whole whitepaper . Look at references 3 and 4 , satoshi pointed there are things that can be done through script , infact he was the first to inject arbitrary data on chain .

[Abiky]

As we all know the Ordinal and Inscription totally spam the btc network which is headache for the small btc holder. Those who understands the real purpose of btc and wants to spread information of btc will never happy with this spam feature because we cannot introduce people that you have to pay 10$ for every transaction (whenever you buy and sell).

Here in Bitcointalk,Signature payments are generally processed weekly and compaign manager have to pay the high fee which is not only loss of projects but also member total recieving payment also affected.

Now officially Bitcoin Devolpers are come into the ground and planning to kill these spamming in Blockchain. I think this is very positive news and maybe the reason or #ORDI token dump. I hope these spam will be no more disturb the common user and we will once again experiencing fast and low fee Blockchain.

Devolpers Luke Dashjr tweet

PSA: “Inscriptions” are exploiting a vulnerability in #Bitcoin Core to spam the blockchain. Bitcoin Core has, since 2013, allowed users to set a limit on the size of extra data in transactions they relay or mine (`-datacarriersize`). By obfuscating their data as program code, Inscriptions bypass this limit.

This bug was recently fixed in Bitcoin Knots v25.1. It took longer than usual due to my workflow being severely disrupted at the end of last year (v24 was skipped entirely).

Bitcoin Core is still vulnerable in the upcoming v26 release. I can only hope it will finally get fixed before v27 next year.

This was already discussed before. A small number of developers (most notably Luke Dashjr) want to censor Ordinals inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain. It's a contentious subject among community members, especially when it goes against Bitcoin's principles. While the filter is beneficial for users (lower fees, and reduced confirmation time), it's certainly harmful for miners. Especially when they'll be losing the ability to earn some extra money.

How Bitcoin would go forward from now on, is a mystery. It would best to have Ordinals on Bitcoin, while keeping on-chain fees as low as possible. The only solution to this would be to increase the block size (which means greater transaction capacity). Or developers can introduce the filter, and provide a way for Ordinals inscriptions to move to a sidechain or even the LN itself. Lets hope everything goes back to normal by 2024. Just my thoughts

[pooya87]

Well , seems that you only read the title and not the whole whitepaper . Look at references 3 and 4 , satoshi pointed there are things that can be done through script ,

When you write a paper you always refer to other work that was done and share similarity with your new work. When Satoshi was explaining what a "timestamp server" is he referred to 4 other works done in that topic (references 2 to 5) in the past. That doesn't mean Bitcoin is meant to be used as cloud storage just because these references exist in the paper!!!

infact he was the first to inject arbitrary data on chain .

And he did it within the protocol rules not by exploiting them. In fact he used the strictest one that allows the miner to insert a tiny message (max 100 bytes) in the coinbase of the block they work hard to find.

[franky1]

again the solution is not "lets move over to a subnetwork/altcoin"
again the solution is not "do nothing just pay more fees"

for even the "lets not censor transactions" crowd
for even the "lets not make fee's higher" crowd

ther real solution is simple
these junk/spam are easy it spot and audit in code
a. they use particular opcodes
b. they respend young coins(low confirms)

so penalise certain opcode usage and low confirm UTXO spending. whereby only the spammers and junkers pay more then a base fe everyone else pays. and yes it can be enforced. thats what is great about code

i do have to laugh at certain trolls that prefer to want the junk/spam to continue so that people decide to not use bitcoin in favour of other networks trolls promote.
they dont want memes and spam censored but they do want small payment censored

[stompix]

It is spam because block space is being used for things that are not related to "A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System".

Which is your opinion. People who use ordinals are of the opinion it is not spam. I happen to agree with you - ordinals are completely worthless spam - but I don't for a second believe that my opinion is the objective truth and everyone should do what I say.

Remember:
My censorship is good, your is bad!
My opinion is good, the other's is flawed.

Ironically, decentralization both work with censorship and fails with it, as everyone is free to censor if they want as Luke does and at the same time they can ignore it,  but again it's a play of numbers if Luke gets most of the  hashrate on his pool the whole decentralization turns into quasi centralization.
Really fun times to watch this, I wonder what's the plan to clean the mempool once 1 millions "legit" users will try to use the chain, ar we going to have health check on the tx or credit score attached? What is he going to ban next?

Even when we're already seeing cases of collateral damage?  Purely financial transactions are currently being impacted on the Bitcoin network because LukeJr is trying to create a hostile environment for non-financial transactions.

Wait till he is going to put a limit on the amount of tx that are generated from a single address, more than one loaf a bread two transactions a day is immoral.

[HmmMAA]

When you write a paper you always refer to other work that was done and share similarity with your new work. When Satoshi was explaining what a "timestamp server" is he referred to 4 other works done in that topic (references 2 to 5) in the past. That doesn't mean Bitcoin is meant to be used as cloud storage just because these references exist in the paper!!!

Strange , i thought that script gives that opportunity to use bitcoin as a cloud timestamped storage ( magnificent thought huh ? ) . Imagine downloading something that's 100% safe from a reliable source ? Or many other usecases that could change the world ? Of course , not every one could afford a node to validate it's own transactions ( i thought that's what mining nodes purpose is ) , so probably satoshi didn't think of it well . Everyone should have the right to his own node , period .

[o_e_l_e_o]

With that said, other methods of abusing bitcoin are already facing a lot of limitations making them inefficient ways of spamming the network in comparison to the Ordinals exploit that is basically facing only one limit which is the block weight and is so much cheaper.

Inefficient yes, but still entirely possible. If requiring them to pay a bit more or even double per transaction than they are paying now by forcing them to use a less efficient method of embedding their data is enough to kill ordinals, then they will easily burn themselves out on the current fee market and we don't need to censor them at all.

Centralized exchanges and other entities are a natural part of the Bitcoin ecosystem, so it's not a spam.

Exactly my point. You think centralized exchanges aren't spam; I think they are. These are subjective opinions. We might agree that ordinals are spam, but there are plenty of others who disagree with us.

Well if they were as popular and problematic as ordianls, they should have been treated as a bug too.

So we are quite happy with unproductive nuisance until it affects the fees that a particular group of users have to pay, at which point that particular group of users will seek to ban it? That is not the makings of a decentralized system.

Bitcoin's only function should be sending money

Then you need to campaign to remove things like OP_RETURN outputs and all burn addresses, and introduce zero knowledge proof of keys for every transaction as I explained above so you can prove that you are sending money to a known private key, which would require more block space and fees than ordinals do. And what about things like coinjoin transactions then, which are already caught in the crossfire of this nonsense? You are just moving your money around with coinjoins, not sending it to anyone else. Do we ban those too? Or consolidation transactions? What about if I want to move money from one wallet to another? Who gets to decide what is a legitimate use case and what isn't?

My point is that as soon as you start placing arbitrary limits on other people's use cases, then other people can use the exact same reasoning to start placing limits on your use case. Bitcoin is supposed to be about freedom, not freedom as long as you use it in a way we like.

Really fun times to watch this, I wonder what's the plan to clean the mempool once 1 millions "legit" users will try to use the chain, ar we going to have health check on the tx or credit score attached? What is he going to ban next?

Next up - fees are too high to make a transaction every time you want to pay for something, so instead store your coins on an account with this centralized third party who can then pay other people with an account with them instantly and with zero fees. We could call it a "bank". Problem solved!

[DooMAD]

If by collateral damage you mean the tweet you shared in your other post[1], I can't tell how that is related to preventing the Ordinals spam by patching the exploit because it seems like a mining pool refused to mine a CoinJoin transaction which is an entirely different discussion specially since they are arguing over the weird limit their pool sets on OP_RETURN which is another unrelated matter here!!!

I don't see that it is unrelated.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but there are only two possible outcomes here.  Either:

a)  LukeJr is somehow unaware that 42 bytes and 83 bytes are not the same value and he's some sort of putz

or

b)  LukeJr knowingly reduced the permitted size of OP_RETURN data in his Bitcoin Knots client (which that pool are using) because he wants to create a hostile environment for non-standard transactions and managed to unwittingly nuke some coinjoin transactions by mistake. 

It's not necessarily that the pool are refusing to mine those transactions, it's that the software they're running simply doesn't recognise those transactions.  All because a developer tried to make things more restrictive and didn't think it through to conclusion.

[noonesh]

Which is your opinion. People who use ordinals are of the opinion it is not spam. I happen to agree with you - ordinals are completely worthless spam - but I don't for a second believe that my opinion is the objective truth and everyone should do what I say.

If your barometer for what is spam is anything which isn't in keeping with "a peer-to-peer electronic cash system", then we also need to ban all transactions from centralized exchanges, since they are not peer to peer either.

If you don't believe your opinion is better than other opinions without anyone convincing you that other opinion is better yet, than you have no opinion at all.


I think the point been discussed is about "purpose". The purpose that brings passion to Bitcoin is having a "coin", means of exchange, store of value, that is independent from state and gives people sovereignty on their own money.
Seeing the blockchain created for this purpose been used as a cloud-driver to store images and non-monetary tokens or data in general is very painful.

The question is, if ordinals and inscriptions in general are bringing harm to bitcoin in any way, preventing its usage as money, isn't this something worth doing something about? Block space is been flooded with images (memes, useless), and jsons creating tickers that represent nothing in reality. This is Ethereum business, not bitcoin.

I don't mean a hard-fork, or a soft fork, I really don't know, but I think it worth discussing without throwing out that anything related with discussing this would be "censorship".

They already pay for the space they use just like everyone else. And at the current fee rates, that is very expensive indeed.

Yes, they pay for it, as I pay for Google Drive space or iCloud... they are using my node as a cloud storage and paying for someone that's not me. It's expensive and unfair with "amateur" node runners, with their 1 TB storage and a raspberry pi.

At some point this might push these small node runners out of the network and make Bitcoin less decentralized.

So as I've pointed out above, you can transfer UTXOs from one address to the other and embed arbitrary data in the public key (or even in the signature). It's impossible to ban that without hard forking to introduce some new zero knowledge proof that someone knows the private key of any address before coins are sent to it.

Before Taproot we didn't have anyone trying to play Ethereum on Bitcoin, because it didn't worth the effort. After Taproot, what can be done to make annoying, difficult or unprofitable to save images of dogs in the blockchain?

[pooya87]

~

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5474329.msg63178394#msg63178394

a)  LukeJr is somehow unaware that 42 bytes and 83 bytes are not the same value and he's some sort of putz

or

b)  LukeJr knowingly reduced the permitted size of OP_RETURN data in his Bitcoin Knots client (which that pool are using) because he wants to create a hostile environment for non-standard transactions and managed to unwittingly nuke some coinjoin transactions by mistake. 

Or this limit existed in Bitcoin Knots for a very long time (maybe from the very beginning) and is not a new thing this implementation of the protocol is enforcing as standard rule. Here is a random oldest version I could find from 8 years ago with the 42 byte limit present:
https://github.com/bitcoinknots/bitcoin/blob/v0.12.1.knots20160629.rc2/src/script/standard.h#L30