Luke sparked a "heated debate" in BTC inscriptions, how did the overseas community perceive it?

By James Hunt, The Block

Compilation: Felix, PANews

CORE****POINTS

• Luke Dashjr, BTC developer and co-founder of Ocean Mining Pool, said that inions are using a vulnerability in the BTC core client (Bitcoin Core) to spam blockchains, which was recently “fixed” in Bitcoin Knots v25.1, which he maintains
• Many community members disagree with this statement, saying that the inscription will not stop amid the ongoing heated debate around the issue of network congestion and how to use the BTC.
• The inscription craze appears to be spreading to other chains as well, leading to a surge in trading volume at ETH Place, Solana, Near, Polygon, Celo, and Fantom.

Luke Dashjr, the core developer of the BTC and co-founder of the Ocean mining pool, has published a lengthy article criticizing inscriptions such as Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens, calling them “spam” on BTC blockchains, and is currently being debated around different points of view such as network congestion and how BTC can be used.

Dashjr posted on X: "The inscription is exploiting a vulnerability in Bitcoin Core to spam the blockchain. Since 2013, Bitcoin Core has allowed users to set a limit on the size of additional data when relaying or mining, and the inscription bypasses this limit by obfuscating the data into program code.

Dashjr added: "This bug was recently fixed in Bitcoin Knots v25.1. But Bitcoin Core remains vulnerable in the upcoming v26 release. I only hope it will be fixed before next year’s v27 release. ”

One community member asked, “If this ‘bug/vulnerability’ is fixed, does it mean that Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens will cease to exist?” Dashjr replied: “Yes, the Ordinals do not exist in the first place, everything is a hoax”, although the existing inscription will still be preserved.

Bitcoin Knots is a derivative of Bitcoin Core and is primarily maintained by Dashjr. Currently BTC percentage of nodes using Bitcoin Knots is relatively small, at only 147 (0.22%). In contrast, 66,545 nodes (98.83%) are using Bitcoin Core (the most widely used software in BTC protocol), so reaching consensus on a similar change to Bitcoin Core is another matter entirely.

However, according to the latest news, Luke Dashjr replied to the question on platform X, “Is it possible for one miner not to opt out, then that miner can still process inscription transactions on the blockchain, or does miners have to reach a majority consensus on whether to opt-in/opt-out?”, Dashjr replied: We don’t have to eliminate all the inscriptions to bring benefits to the BTC ecosystem.

Sparked heated debate in overseas communities, Dashjr was criticized for being too subjective

While Dashjr’s remarks are supported by other BTC enthusiasts such as BTC educator Giacomo Zucco, there are still many who disagree.

In response to Dashjr’s post, Trevor Owens, general partner at Bitcoin Frontier Fund (formerly Stacks Ventures), said: "Regardless of whether this ‘bug/exploit’ is added to Bitcoin Core v27 (hint: it doesn’t), the inscriptions never stop. People will pay for them, miners will mine them. As long as there is demand in the market, you can’t stop it and accept this reality. Several other Ordinals community members posted the same message.

Udi Wertheimer, co-founder of Taproot Wizards, BTC the Ordinals project, said: "Dashjr has made only sporadic contributions to open source BTC projects over the years, and he does not own BTC network. ”

Udi Wertheimer added: “Since February of this year, Dashjr has been angrily tweeting against the Ordinals inscription, but has not been able to stop it. This rhetoric and outrage is expected to persist as Ordinals further cements its position as the primary use case for BTC networks. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Dashjr for hosting our wizard jpeg on his BTC node forever”. (Mocking Dashjr’s inability to do anything about the inscription)

Eric Wall, co-founder of Taproot Wizards, said: “He’s not proposing a change to the consensus rules, he’s suggesting that miners ban inscriptions from entering blocks. If Dashjr does it his way, it means that only one mining pool is needed to incorporate the inscription on-chain. We already know about a mining pool like Ordinals - Luxor, which helped us mine 4MB of Taproot Wizard jpeg. If Luxor has a monopoly on inscription mining, it will be the most profitable mining pool to date, and even if you agree with Dashjr’s fantasy idea, the hashrate will be very concentrated, as most people will mine with Luxor. Dashjr’s proposal is completely contrary to his goals.”

“Luke Dashjr has taken a subjective ethical stance on Ordinals inscriptions, while also establishing a mining method at the Ocean mining pool that completely ignores inscription transactions with heavy loads of data. Solving the problem of money with mathematics is a task that few people take seriously (most miners will choose to mine inscriptions because of their greater economic value). Dashjr has the ability to implement a way that doesn’t block BTC blockchains. However, Dashjr’s view is not a network consensus, and given that the inscription will bring greater profits to BTC miners, Dashjr’s efforts may be wishful thinking.” Jesse Shrader, co-founder and CEO of Amboss, a provider of Lightning Network data analytics, said.

He added: "Taking a subjective moral stance on whether a deal is good or bad is largely in conflict with the essence of what BTC has always been: BTC is a ruthless neutral agreement. Once you start making subjective judgments based on the content of a transaction, users may find that they are less censorship-resistant, as we have moved away from transactional judgments based on how much fees are charged. ”

Jameson Lopp, Chief Technology Officer at Casa, said: "Luke Dashjr has the right to give his opinion, but I suspect that few people agree to classify the inscription as a vulnerability. Classifying them as spam is subjective: it depends on whether you think you should decide which use cases are appropriate uses of the BTC protocol, or whether you think any valid transaction that pays competitive fees should be allowed to buy block space. ”

Lopp expects economic rationality to prevail, explaining that most miners are currently large institutions with a responsibility to maximize profits for shareholders, so they will mine any valid transaction that can pay the highest fees. On the developer side, Lopp has previously stated that “banning arbitrary data is a ‘XTZ hole’ that you don’t want to fall into.” ”

Its mining poolOcean caused controversy due to filtering ordinal inscriptions

Last week, Luke Dashjr’s Ocean mining pool, led by Block CEO Jack Dorsey, raised a $6.2 million seed round to support the launch of the Ocean mining pool and other mining decentralized projects.

The Ocean mining pool, on the other hand, utilizes a “fixed” version of Bitcoin Knots to filter inscription transactions. "Among other improvements, this upgrade fixes this long-standing vulnerability exploited by spammers. As a result, our blocks will now include more real transactions and help put an end to DoS attacks on BTC networks. ”

Udi Wertheimer has previously commented on the filter, “There is a strong suspicion that it is true (if it is, they will soon go bankrupt).” ”

Amid the constant criticism of Ocean’s censorship of transactions, Ocean’s global head of sales, who goes by the pseudonym Bitcoin Mechanic, said: "There is no point in discussing censorship with people who don’t understand it. We will filter out the inscription garbage, and of course you are free to mine in other mining pools and continue to spread FUD. ”

Still, many miners are excited about the rise of BTC inscriptions, as they earn additional transaction fees on top of the BTC block reward. Dashjr argues that "the operation of BTC is based on the fact that most miners are honest and have no malicious intent. In addition, blocks that filter spam often charge more for some reason. ”

Miner income surges

According to The Block, transactions on the BTC network have surged at different times this year. At the same time, inscription-related activity also increased, with BTC reaching an all-time high of 607,000 transactions per day in November.

As a result, BTC miners have seen an uptick in revenue from transaction fees compared to incentive subsidies.

However, inscription activity also led to network congestion. If other users are unwilling to pay higher fees, it can lead to higher fees or delays in transaction processing. At the time of writing, there are more than 275,000 transactions on the BTC network waiting to be confirmed, which is more than 5 times more than the allocated 300 MB of memory usage. According to BTC explorer Mempool, the current average transaction fee for the next block is around $17, compared to the historical average of just $1 to $2.

Inscription craze pushes **** transaction volume of each chain to soar

The growing popularity of BTC Ordinals earlier this year also sparked debate about whether inscriptions for NFTs and BRC-20 tokens on BTC should exist because the inscriptions rely on BTC’s OP_RETURN function for storing arbitrary data in the blockchain.

Some believe that these elements were an unintended consequence of the BTC SegWit and Taproot upgrades, making the inscriptions more economically viable and should be removed from the BTC. Others argue that this unintended consequence is an integral part of the upgrade and should continue to be used as long as the user follows the rules of the BTC.

“I think it’s a battle of two main points about how BTC should be used,” Lopp said in July. One of them is more subjective, arguing that only simple and pure financial transactions should be allowed, just like BTC are just cash. Another view is that BTC is a programmable monetary protocol that should be open for people to use as long as it operates within the rules. ”

Despite the ongoing controversy in the market, the current BRC-20 token craze has spread to other chains, including ETH, Solana, Near, Polygon, Celo, and Fantom, and has led to a surge in trading volume.

For example, according to The Block, the average daily trading volume of the Near blockchain soared to an all-time high this month due to inscriptions.

There has been a similar surge on Polygon recently, with the number of transactions from Nov. 14 to Nov. 15 surging from 2.89 million to an all-time high of 6.1 million, the highest since October last year.

In this regard, BTC proponent Eric Wall explained, “Because gas burning/wasting block space is the last allocation mechanism that exists in ‘open retail’. Retail investors often face multiple challenges when acquiring low-cap cryptocurrencies, such as the illegality of ICOs, potential market manipulation risks that make it difficult to conduct airdrops, or invest in Memecoin. The BRC-20 token, on the other hand, allows anyone to participate fairly in the issuance of a particular token from day one. Degen found a way out.”

Related reading: BTC developers set off a storm of inscription banning, a game of multiple interests