Ordinals Test Bitcoin's Core Values, Security Debate Ensues

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A renewed debate over Bitcoin ordinal inscriptions has emerged, fueled by a surge in unconfirmed transactions on the blockchain. Luke Dashjr, a Bitcoin Core developer, has labeled Ordinals as a ‘bug’ exploiting a vulnerability in Bitcoin Core.

The issue gained prominence in May when Binance temporarily halted Bitcoin withdrawals due to network congestion caused by Ordinals. At that time, the number of unconfirmed transactions soared to 400,000.

On-chain data reveals that there are currently over 260,000 unconfirmed transactions, leading to elevated transaction fees and increased memory usage beyond the allotted 300 MB.

According to Dashjr, Bitcoin Core has allowed users to limit the size of extra data in transactions since 2013. Ordinals bypass this limit by obfuscating their data as program code, leading to larger transaction sizes than regular transactions.

But on the contrary, a substantial camp views them as an evolution of Bitcoin’s blockchain. Jason Fang, managing partner and co-founder at Sora Ventures, asserts that Ordinals are unstoppable, providing miners with more fees and higher profits.

Fang argues that the open-source approach encouraged by Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, supports experimentation and innovation. He sees Ordinals as a natural progression that maintains Bitcoin’s original consensus while building on top of it.

“Inscriptions are unstoppable,” Fang stated. “This gives miners more fees and higher profits.”

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