Original author: 0xTodd (X: @0x_Todd)

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"Will Bitcoin Core developers kill inscriptions? It's not that easy [BTC Ecosystem]"

Editor's note: Recently, Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr posted on the X platform: "Inscription is using a vulnerability in the Bitcoin Core client Bitcoin Core to send spam to the blockchain. Since 2013, Bitcoin Core has allowed users to set additional data size limits when forwarding or mining transactions. Inscriptions bypass this limit by obfuscating their data as program code. Hopefully, this vulnerability will be fixed before next year's Bitcoin Knots V2 7. If this bug is fixed, the Ordinals inscription and BRC 20 tokens will cease to exist." As soon as the news came out, it sparked heated discussions in the market.

What other details do we need to know about this inscription storm? X KOL 0xTodd (X: @0x_Todd) published an article sorting out 10 little pieces of knowledge about the inscription storm, which Odaily Planet Daily compiled as follows:

There are 10 little pieces of knowledge to share with you:

1. If the Bitcoin Knots client, as Luke said, is upgraded to reject transactions containing the $Ordi inscription, will the inscription still work?

A: If it is the Bitcoin Knots client’s turn to produce a block, the inscription transaction will be unusable (cannot be put on the chain).

2. So is the probability of Bitcoin Knots client producing blocks high?

A: It is quite small at the moment. Currently (December 2023), there are over 17,000 Bitcoin Core clients and less than 100 Knots clients (but it can reach 500 at a higher time).

3. Wait, what is a client?

Answer: For PoW blockchain, there is a software that needs to take on the three functions of "storing ledgers, mining and wallets", and this software is the "client".

Because the blockchain is open (permissionless), in theory anyone can develop a client as long as it meets the consensus of this chain. Therefore, there can be various clients, such as Bitcoin Core and Knots.

4. If Bitcoin Core really follows up and decides to ban inscription transactions, will inscriptions be completely untradable?

A: No. Because the Bitcoin Core client needs to be subdivided, and many people are using the old version.

Of the 17,000+ Bitcoin Core client users to date, 9,000 use versions 24-25, and 5,000 use versions 21-23. Therefore, even though the rules prohibiting the abuse of block space were added to version 27, the older versions can still be used normally.

So as long as you wait patiently, when it is the turn of the old version of Core to produce blocks, this inscription can still be used. That is, for example, if it takes 10 minutes to be on the chain now, it will take 30 minutes in the future.

Of course, miners tend to upgrade to the latest version. If everyone upgrades slowly, the availability of inscriptions will become very poor.

5. If Ordi decides to fork the Bitcoin chain, will it succeed?

A: Technically, forking is very simple. You just need to copy the Bitcoin Core code and you can use it without much modification (because the old version supports it).

In terms of consensus, forking is difficult. What is consensus? You want miners, exchanges, holders, and even the SEC to agree that "a big pie that contains small pie is the real big pie", which is almost impossible.

6. I must fork, so does the forked Bitcoin make sense?

A: Yes, but it is very limited.

What Bitcoin is proud of is the security guaranteed by its powerful computing power. If there is a new chain that is not as secure as Bitcoin and can issue all kinds of digital artifacts...wait, then why not use the EVM chain?

7. Are Ordi and BRC-20 really using vulnerabilities to use the Bitcoin blockchain?

A: Yes, but the term "exploiting loopholes" is a bit too much. I think it can be regarded as "circumventing restrictions" at most.

After all, subjectively speaking, Ordi is not as bad as "exploiting a vulnerability", a term generally used to describe hackers. But objectively speaking, it does cause a waste of Bitcoin block space.

8. Really? What is the engraving process? How to circumvent it?

A: "Engraving" means to select a certain BTC, that is, 0.00000001 BTC, and "color" it. Then use Taproot (one of Bitcoin's new technologies) to annotate this 1 BTC in the form of a text script.

For example, the note is: the protocol is Ord, the format is UTF-8, and the content is "hello world".

If we have to use an analogy, it is roughly equivalent to:

WeChat red envelopes were originally used to transfer money. But now, every time I transfer 1 cent to you, we have to chat through the notes on the red envelope.

This is hardly an exploit, but it's probably an abuse.

Normally, Bitcoin does not support the creation of NFTs, but this "transfer + note" method can achieve this in disguised form.

At the same time, the Taproot technology was used to bypass the original upper limit of the comment, increasing it from a few bytes to a maximum of 512 bytes.

8.5 A side note: Notes and smart contracts are different, you should know that.

Smart contract is to sign a contract.

And notes are just notes.

The two have different effectiveness.

This is also one of the differences between Ethereum NFT and BRC inscriptions.

• If I transfer money to you using a smart contract, it is a real transfer that cannot be denied.

• If I transfer money to you with a note, for example, this inscription of Todd now belongs to Alex, I just write it in the note.

Now with this agreement Ordi, the ruling is that this note is valid and it is deemed that my transfer to you is successful.

9. Isn’t the inscription an NFT?

Indeed, there is a difference between the two.

A lot of NFT data is stored off-chain, while all inscriptions are on the BTC chain.

Of course, this is a double-edged sword, and this is precisely what causes BTC headaches.

The advantage is that the miners’ income has increased, so *perhaps* after N halvings, it will become an important source of income for miners.

The downside is that it makes the Bitcoin ledger larger (after all, a lot of extra content has been stuffed in to circumvent restrictions), which is not conducive to the storage of the full node.

The larger the ledger size and the fewer full nodes, the more the blockchain resembles a consortium chain.

9.5 Does the size of the ledger really matter?

The size of the ETH ledger has always been very large. In recent years, we have realized this problem and have been discussing how to cut off some historical states and even historical ledgers.

Bitcoin has always done well in this regard because it uses small blocks. The ledger size is not too large, so there are many full nodes and it is very decentralized.

10. Where should the inscription go?

Perhaps it would be a good idea to actively limit transaction volume and cut it down a bit on the current basis.

Taproot is a new technology of Bitcoin Core, and its original intention is to enable Bitcoin to implement some basic script functions.

Ordi can use Taproot to bypass the maximum note limit. But it is not a good idea to cram too much into Bitcoin in a circumvented way, after all, the difference is hundreds of times from a few bytes to hundreds of bytes.

But if we impose some restrictions and keep a certain scale so as not to cause the "tragedy of the commons", I believe that the Bitcoin core community will not be too disgusted with such digital cultural relics, and this may be a better choice.

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