Bitcoin dev Luke Dashjr proposes to ban ‘spam’ ordinals

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—by Protos Staff
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Luke Dashjr, one of Bitcoin Core’s developers, has proposed to ban bitcoin NFTs and the BRC-20 by extending spam filtration to Bitcoin’s recently introduced Taproot transactions.

Taproot was one of the most significant upgrades in the Bitcoin network and was agreed upon by most miners. It made Bitcoin more efficient and private by introducing multisig wallets. The upgrade also came with the possibility to inscribe text and images or add data to single satoshis, and now even single tokens, with a new Bitcoin protocol called BRC-20.

These ‘permanent’ inscriptions, known as Bitcoin ordinals, have created a new NFT market. However, the popularity of Bitcoin ordinals has led to unexpected aberrations in the Bitcoin network, such as very high transaction fees and even network latency. 

Crypto users are torn about Bitcoin ordinals — some, like NFT historian Leonidas, defended the new Bitcoin NFT market, while other old-time bitcoiners like Adam Beck are skeptical, describing it as another “proof of consumption”. Meanwhile, in a recent interview, Michael Saylor welcomed the current market hype for Bitcoin ordinals as a way to help bitcoin push into its next bull run.

Luke Dashjr, who has worked as a Bitcoin Core developer since 2011, has been very vocal in his opposition to bitcoin NFTs. “Action should have been taken months ago,” Luke Dashjr wrote on Monday. “Spam filtration has been a standard part of Bitcoin Core since day one. It’s a mistake that the existing filters weren’t extended to Taproot transactions.”

“We can address that, or try a more narrow approach like OP_RETURN (ie, what “0rdisrespector does). Since this is a bug fix, it doesn’t really even need to wait for a major release.”

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