Since their creation, Bitcoin Ordinals have always been the subject of controversy within the Bitcoin community. This project described by its creator as An innovation has not received a warm reception in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Today its existence is in danger due to a potentially imminent update.
A look back at Bitcoin Ordinals
In January 2023, a software engineer named Casey Rodarmor released the Ordinals protocol. The latter allows crypto fans to post all kinds of things like images, texts, programs, and even video games directly on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Thus, this program has complicated the definition of Bitcoin and even createdthere were quite a few debates among crypto enthusiasts.
Some Bitcoin purists see Ordinals in the protocol an attack on the very essence cryptocurrency which they consider unique and different from altcoins. Others, however, use this protocol to challenge maximalists, those die-hard Bitcoin enthusiasts, by loading large amounts of non-essential data into each block of the chain.
The origin of Ordinals revealed: Exploitation of vulnerabilities in the Bitcoin code
On December 6, one of the most influential developers of Bitcoin Core, Luke Dashjr, posted on X (formerly Twitter) a statement revealing a critical flaw in the Bitcoin Core, operated by the creators of Ordinals and BRC-20.
PSA: “Registrations” 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,…
— Luke Dashjr (@LukeDashjr) December 6, 2023
According to him, they use this vulnerability to excessively integrate data on satoshis (the smallest unit of BTC), which causes significant congestion on the Bitcoin blockchain.
Dashjr clarified that, although the Bitcoin Core code has allowed the size of additional data in transactions to be limited since 2013, registrations escape this restriction by hiding their data as program code.
Finally, to fix this problem, they made a big update to Bitcoin Knots, a modified version of Bitcoin Core. So the goal of this update was to fix this bug that was letting people emit more data than they should in their Bitcoin transactions.
Also, Bitcoin Knots differs from Bitcoin Core by the integration of less tested or untested features, from back ports, and sometimes maintained outside the main code. This correction could therefore mark a decisive turning point in the management of Bitcoin Ordinals and BRC-20, potentially in putting an end to their abusive exploitation of the blockchain.
The future of Bitcoin Ordinals following this update
In response to a question about the future of Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens if the vulnerability was resolved, Luke Dashjr stated that they “would cease to exist”, while specifying that the existing inscriptions would remain.
At the same time, the decentralized mining protocol Ocean, where Dashjr is technical director, announced that the Bitcoin Knots update would indeed correct this flaw long exploited by spammers.
Therefore, this update aims to promote greater inclusion of “real transactions” in blocks, suggesting that Ordinals inscriptions were seen as a form of denial of service attack against the Bitcoin network.
Dashjr, known for his firm opposition to ordinal inscriptions, considers that the latter cause considerable and irreversible damage to Bitcoin and its users, calling the Ordinals an “attack on Bitcoin”.
For now, ORDI, one of the most popular BRC20 tokens, has seen its price drop by around 10% in a few hours following this debate from Twitter and its price is currently around $45.
Sources: CoinTelegraph / CoinMarketCap
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