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Ordinals, a new way to use and access content using Bitcoin, allow creators to take advantage of the utility of nfts (non-figurable chips) directly from the blockchain, primarily the native creation of Bitcoin nfts. It has shaken the pot in certain quarters, who are now talking about whether this is the way Bitcoin blockchain should be used, and how this new usage case will impact Bitcoin nodes and fees going forward.
Ordinals Allow Bitcoin NFTs Courtesy from Taproot.
A newly found use case for Bitcoin chain is now being tested by people who have figured out a way to get content directly to blockchain. The project, called Ordinals, and launched just a few days ago, has enabled anyone to create Bitcoin NFTs (called inscriptions) as part of its functionality. This opportunity was inadvertently opened by the taproot upgrade as the network in November, which extended the duration of Bitcoin transactions to nearly the entire block size.
It has played a key role in what's going on right now. Prior to taproot, transactions could be as small as 80 bytes, which limited the use of what was stored in the block space. Now, Bitcoin nfts are registered directly on the chain, allowing the advantages of portability, sustainability and decentralisation that characterize Bitcoin.
It has the potential to provide unique benefits to content creators and users, since every element of content stored on the blockchain via ordinals must be synchronized by every node there, providing them with the durability of the blockchain itself. Most of the nft projects which exploit other chains, including ethereum, simply store pointers to the information, which does not reside directly on the blockchain.
Controversy surrounding the new feature.
While there are a few apparent advantages around adopting Bitcoin TNT, the rise of this new functionality has sparked an old debate over the real function of the network and what constitutes an attack on the Bitcoin ecosystem. There already exist two groups in this public debate: those that support this new face of Bitcoin, and those who think it is a spam attack that should be avoided, if not censored.
The first group argues that this is a net benefit to the channel and will help increase fees and use cases for the channel. This is the case of known bitcoin-influencer Dan Held, who believes that each transaction paying its fee is not spam and that the chain is permissionless for anyone to build on top of it.
The second group claims that, although there is nothing they can do to stop it, it will harm case of financial and transactional use of Bitcoin. Blockstream CEO Adam Back, believed by some to be Satoshi Nakamoto, is part of this faction, that bitcoin users can “educate and encourage developers who care about bitcoin’s use-case to either not do that, or do it in a prunable space-efficient eg time-stamp way.”
Luke Dashjr, a bitcoin developer, called this an “attack” on the protocol and asked for “spam” filters to be developed to counter ordinal functionality. Another Twitter user called “Bitcoin is saving” criticized this from another point of view, explaining that this would affect the viability of marginalized people in developing countries for running Bitcoin nodes and sending transactions.
How about ordinary people and bitcoins? Tell us about it in the comments below.
