The core developers want to ban the inscription "frypot". Will Bitcoin fork as a result?

On November 7, 2023, ORDI, the leading BRC20 token, was listed on Binance, and on December 5, ORDI exceeded $65. In other words, ORDI rose more than 10 times in less than a month .

Such an increase has once again sparked controversy in the Bitcoin community over the Ordinal theory and Bitcoin inscriptions .

On December 6, Bitcoin Core developers announced that they would fix the Taproot vulnerability and ban Bitcoin inscriptions. As the controversy fermented, the price of ORDI, the leading BRC20 token, fell sharply, from $65 to below $50, a drop of more than 20%.

Bitcoin Core developer fires: Ordinals and BRC20 are spam for BTC

At around 9 am Beijing time on December 6, Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr tweeted:

"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 in transactions they relay or mine ("-datacarriersize"). Inscription bypasses this limit by obfuscating data as program code.

This bug was recently fixed in Bitcoin Knots v25.1. It took longer than usual to get going due to a severe break in my workflow late last year (skipped v24 entirely).

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

Some netizens asked: So if "Inscription" wants to continue, it seems to me that a more environmentally friendly way is to create an "Inscription Chain", similar to Ethereum's Layer 2. This chain only needs to submit a hash root to Bitcoin regularly to run. Right?

Luke Dashjr: Yes, that is doable. And then it wouldn't even need to have a block size limit at all - each node could set its own limit (or none).

The debate has a long history

As early as May 2023, when the last wave of Bitcoin inscriptions was popular, developers in the bitcoin-dev channel discussed this controversy.

The discussion was initiated by another Bitcoin core developer, Ali Sherief. Ali Sherief said that due to the excessive volume of transactions such as BRC-20, the Bitcoin network was seriously congested. Such "one-cent value" transactions threatened the stability and normal use of the Bitcoin network as a peer-to-peer digital currency. Should Bitcoin developers take action?

He said that the Bitcoin network is made up of developers, miners, and users. Given that miners are largely responsible for abusing the system, the harmony of Bitcoin transactions is now being destroyed. Although the developer community has a long history of not interfering unless absolutely necessary - an example was during the block wars and Segwit. Should similar action be taken now, in the form of i) a BIP and/or ii) a submission to the Bitcoin Core codebase to mitigate the vulnerability in BIP 342 (which defines the validation rules for Taproot scripts) that led to these unintended consequences? Another approach would be to enforce this "censorship" at the node level and introduce a run-time option to immediately remove all non-standard Taproot' transactions.

Luke Dashjr said in the bitcoin-dev channel at the time that action should have been taken months ago. Spam filtering has been a standard feature of Bitcoin Core since its inception. Not extending the existing filters to include Taproot transactions was a mistake.

Bitcoin OG and former Blockstream CSO Samson Mow agrees with Luke’s views. He has previously stated that inscriptions clog the Bitcoin network like spam, and that Bitcoin’s mass adoption is due to its use as a savings technology and a means of transaction, not because “people make JPEGs and put them on the Bitcoin chain.”

How big is the impact after the vulnerability is fixed?

The first is that Ordinals and BRC-20 no longer exist.

Luke Dashjr confirmed in a reply on the social platform that if the Bitcoin Core vulnerability is fixed, it means that Ordinals and BRC-20 will no longer exist.

Other effects:

Crypto developer Ben77 took a deep dive into Luke Dashjr’s code in knots, a desktop Bitcoin node, and discovered some key details.

Luke set two main parameters in knots to filter out so-called fraudulent Bitcoin transactions:

datacarriersize: This parameter mainly limits the size of data carried based on op-return, that is, those that write data in the output part of UTXO. If this limit is enabled, the affected protocols will include: Colored coins, OmniLayer, Runes, etc.

maxscriptsize: This parameter limits the inscription protocol based on TaprootScript, whose data is engraved in the witness field of UTXO. If this limit takes effect, the affected protocols will include ordinarys, brc20, etc.

It can be seen that if Luke's idea is really accepted into the core, the default limit values ​​of these two parameters may result in only taprootassets and RGB, which have the smallest on-chain footprint, being left in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Crypto researcher Haotian said:

Inscription is considered a dust attack, and a switch will be given to miners in Bitcoin v25.1. to choose whether to package transactions exceeding SIZE.

The current inscription market directly enriches the pockets of miners. It only provides program configuration parameters for free selection, which is meaningless because no miners will choose it.

If the Core developers insist on getting miners to accept it, subsequent versions may forcibly change the consensus, which means that Bitcoin will fork.

All protocols that rely on Taproot script parameters to issue and transfer assets will be affected. However, the assets already issued by Atomical Protocol will not be affected as subsequent transfers do not rely on Taproot parameters (but it will also affect the issuance of new assets.

The subsequent transfer of BRC20 must be based on on-chain inscription and will be affected globally.

Miners disagree: Bitcoin is unlikely to fork

Regarding Luke's proposal, some netizens also said that it is not feasible because " most miners will choose to mine inscription transactions because it makes more economic sense. Miners will let their butts decide their heads, not their ideas. "

Luke replied "Bitcoin operates on the assumption that most miners are honest and have no malicious intent. Also, for some reason, spam-filtered blocks are often charged more. An ideology that only pursues short-term profits is just another ideology, and a bad one at that. "

In this regard, Shenyu, a miner representative and founder of F2pool, said in the community: BTC is not ETH, and the developers have no say. If the upgrade requires miners to vote, the upgrade will not happen if miners vote against it. If the developer insists on upgrading, then he will fork it himself.

Therefore, some netizens smelled the scent of the BCH fork in 2017 .

Therefore, some people even sighed: question Wu Jihan, understand Wu Jihan, and become Wu Jihan.

Some netizens even made a sharp comment: In the past, Bitcoin forks were caused by miners wanting to fork, but now that inscriptions are popular, miners are making a fortune and are the beneficiaries of inscriptions. Miners don’t want forks. Blocking someone’s financial path is like killing their parents.

Because there is no computing power support, it is probably difficult for Bitcoin to fork.

What do others think?

Yu Xian, the founder of SlowMist, posted on social media that the views of Bitcoin core developer Luke Dashjr were a bit irritating. If everything goes as he wishes, the next version of Bitcoin will fix the vulnerability he thinks: the serial number/inscription is a vulnerability of Bitcoin, a kind of Spam attack. He then tweeted: I personally feel that there is no need to fix this. The impact of this accidentally opened Pandora's box due to the introduction of Taproot (a good thing) is not only a pile of Spam, but also the activeness of the Bitcoin ecosystem, which is not just about serial numbers/inscriptions. Of course, if this is fixed, there can be a compatible solution to better open the Bitcoin ecosystem, so it is better to suffer a short pain than a long pain.

OKX founder Xu Mingxing said, will this force the Bitcoin Inscription community to migrate to src20 or Lightning Network Taproot assets? In any case, OKX will continue to build to support the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Conclusion

Because of the balance of power among developers, miners, and users in the Bitcoin ecosystem, even if Bitcoin Core developers decide to fix Taproot and ban inscriptions, it will be difficult to change anything without the support of miners and users.

Moreover, Stratum V2 itself allows miners to customize block templates, and miners who do not like inscriptions can choose not to package inscription transactions. Perhaps Bitcoin inscriptions will continue to prosper.

However, considering the performance and positioning of Bitcoin, "Spam attack" is also a fact. Bitcoin will eventually need to withstand the test of "Spam attack". Can Bitcoin withstand the test? All choices are in the hands of the Bitcoin community.