While many celebrate the slew of new implementations for Bitcoin (BTC) connected to the new “Ordinals” protocol, the developers who maintain the network’s source code are in a state of confusion.
Critics say that new types of transactions beyond simple Bitcoin transactions are trying to use the blockchain for its intended purpose.
One such critic is Ali Sharif, who told Bloomberg that he believes the Bitcoin system has been “misused.” The developer advised to introduce a Bitcoin update in early March that would cancel all transactions related to the new protocol.
“The valueless tokens threaten the smooth and normal use of the Bitcoin network as a peer-to-peer digital currency,” Davis told colleagues in an email group at the time.
On May 9, bitcoin transaction fees returned to highs not seen since 2017, after an anonymous Twitter user developed the BRC-20 token standard — a project based on arrangements to mine bitcoin’s volatile asset.
What immediately followed was an explosion of memecoins speculating on Bitcoin, which now boasts a market capitalization of $500 million. As a result, record transactions have exploded, recently surpassing 10 million in total.
The Bitcoin blockchain uses a limited amount of hard disk space to record transactions, which limits settlement speed to approximately 7 transactions per second. When users request more transactions than the new blocks can handle, miners must bid to get priority processing of their transfers using higher transaction fees.
Similarly, other developers, such as Luke Dashjar, believe that ordinary transactions should be prioritized, while others should be classified as “spam”. In fact, he has created a tool called “Ordisrespector” for Bitcoin node runners to ignore such problematic transactions.
“The action should have been taken months ago,” he wrote on the development team. “Spam filtering has been a standard part of Bitcoin Core since day one.”
Many believe that innovation should be respected, and consider it unethical for developers to try to ignore what they personally disagree with.
Jameson Loup, co-founder of the Bitcoin Casa security solution, believes that transactions are valid as long as users are willing to pay the attractive fee. Effectively, Loeb says, critics say that any auction is a refusal to serve, and that the winner denies all auction losers.
Billionaire Bitcoin philanthropist and activist Michael Saylor has welcomed the platform’s emergence — especially for apps that can bring in far beyond speculative tokens and assets.
“What if I use [BRC-20] to tokenize all the stocks and ETFs that trade on the NASDAQ so that people can privately protect their stock holdings?” In Bitcoin 2023 in May. “If it was viewed this way, Bitcoiners would love it.”
He has already used the BRC-20 standard to launch the first