Core developers want to disable the Ming inscription explosion pot. Will Bitcoin fork as a result?

Will Bitcoin fork due to core developers' desire to disable the Ming inscription explosion pot?

Author: Maxwell@LianGuai

BRC20 token leader ORDI goes live on Binance on November 7, 2023, and it surpasses $65 on December 5. In other words, ORDI has increased by more than 10 times in less than a month.

With such a surge, there is once again controversy within the Bitcoin community regarding the Ordinal theory and the Bitcoin inscription.

On December 6, Bitcoin Core developers announced that they will fix the Taproot vulnerability and disable Bitcoin inscription. As the controversy escalated, the price of BRC20 token leader ORDI plummeted significantly, dropping from $65 and briefly falling below $50, with a decline of over 20%.

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Bitcoin Core Developers Fire Shots: Ordinals and BRC20 are Junk Mail to BTC

Around 9 a.m. Beijing time on December 6, Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr tweeted:

“Inscription” is using a loophole in Bitcoin Core to send spam to the blockchain. Since 2013, Bitcoin Core has allowed users to set limits on the additional data size in their relayed or mined transactions (“-datacarriersize”). By obfuscating the data as program code, Inscription bypasses this limit.

This bug was recently fixed in Bitcoin Knots v25.1. It took longer than usual due to a serious disruption in my workflow at the end of last year (completely skipped v24).

Bitcoin Core is still vulnerable to attacks in the upcoming v26 release. I can only hope it will be fully fixed before v27 next year.

A user asked: So, if Inscription wants to continue, in my opinion, a more environmentally friendly approach would be to create an “inscription chain,” similar to Ethereum’s Layer 2. This chain only needs to submit hash roots to Bitcoin regularly to operate. Is that correct?

Luke Dashjr replied: Yes, that is feasible. And it doesn’t even need to have a block size limit at all—each node can set its own limit (or have none at all).

The Debate Has Been Going On for a Long Time

As early as May 2023, during the previous Bitcoin inscription frenzy, discussions about this controversy took place in the bitcoin-dev channel.

The discussion was initiated by another Bitcoin Core developer, Ali Sherief. Ali Sherief stated that the high transaction volume of BRC-20 and similar tokens severely congest the Bitcoin network. These transactions, which have “minimal value,” threaten the smooth and normal use of the Bitcoin network as a peer-to-peer digital currency. Should Bitcoin developers take action?

He stated that the Bitcoin network is composed of developers, miners, and users. Considering that miners largely contribute to system abuse, the harmony of Bitcoin transactions is now being disrupted. Although the developer community has a long history of not getting involved unless absolutely necessary – an example being during the block size war and the SegWit period – now is it time to take similar actions in the form of i) BIP and/or ii) submitting to the Bitcoin Core codebase to address the vulnerabilities in BIP 342 (which defines the validation rules for Taproot scripts) that have resulted in these unexpected consequences? Another approach could be to enforce this “review” at the node level and introduce a runtime option to immediately remove all non-standard Taproot transactions.

Luke Dashjr expressed the need for action months ago on the bitcoin-dev channel. Since the birth of Bitcoin Core, spam filtering has always been a standard feature. It was a mistake not to extend the existing filters to Taproot transactions.

Bitcoin OG and former CSO of Blockstream, Samson Mow, agrees with Luke’s point of view. He previously stated that mempools are clogging up the Bitcoin network and its widespread adoption is due to it being a store of value and means of exchange, rather than people “creating JPEGs and putting them on the Bitcoin chain”.

What is the impact after the bug is fixed?

Firstly, Ordinals and BRC-20 no longer exist.

Luke Dashjr confirmed in his social media reply that if the Bitcoin Core bug is fixed, it means that Ordinals and BRC-20 will no longer exist.

Other impacts:

Encryption developer Ben77 delved into the code by Luke Dashjr in knots (a desktop Bitcoin node) and discovered some crucial details.

Luke set two main parameters to restrict filtering of so-called Bitcoin fraud transactions in knots:

datacarriersize: This parameter mainly restricts the size of data carried on op-return, i.e. those that write data in the output section of UTXO. If this restriction is enabled, the affected protocols will include: Colored coins, OmniLayer, Runes, etc.

maxscriptsize: This parameter restricts the TaprootScript-based mempool protocols, with their data carved into the witness field of UTXO. If this restriction is effective, the affected protocols will include ordinals, brc20, etc.

If Luke’s vision really enters the core, the default restriction values for these two parameters may result in only taprootassets and RGB remaining in the Bitcoin ecosystem with the smallest on-chain footprint.

Cryptocurrency researcher Haotian said:

Inscription is regarded as a dust attack and will give miners a switch to choose whether to include transactions that exceed the SIZE in the Bitcoin v25.1 update.

The current inscription market fattens the wallets of miners, but it is meaningless since no miner will choose it.

If Core developers insist on making miners accept it, the future update may force a consensus change, meaning that Bitcoin will fork.

Protocols that depend on Taproot script parameters for issuing and transferring assets will be affected. However, assets issued by the Atomical Protocol will not be affected since they do not depend on the Taproot parameters (but it will affect the issuance of new assets).

On the other hand, the subsequent transfers of BRC20 will be subject to on-chain inscription behavior and will be globally affected.

Miners have different opinions, making it difficult for Bitcoin to fork

Regarding Luke’s proposal, some users also expressed doubts about its feasibility, stating that “most miners would choose to mine transactions with inscriptions since it is more economically sensible. Miners decide based on their bottom line, not the intentions behind the form.”

Luke responded, “Bitcoin operates under the assumption that most miners are honest and not malicious. Additionally, for some reason, blocks filtering spam transactions often charge higher fees. An ideology that only pursues short-term profits is just another bad ideology.”

In response, F2pool founder and representative of miners, Shen Yu, stated in the community, “BTC is not ETH, the developers don’t have the final say. If an upgrade requires miners’ votes, and the miners vote against it, the upgrade cannot proceed. If developers insist on an upgrade, they can fork their own version.”

Therefore, some users have sensed a taste of the 2017 BCH fork.

Thus, some people have expressed their sighs: question Wu Jihan, understand Wu Jihan, become Wu Jihan.

Others have made sharp comments: in the past, Bitcoin forks were initiated by miners, but now with the popularity of inscription, miners are profiting. Miners don’t want a fork. Obstructing someone’s prosperity is like killing their parents.

It is difficult for Bitcoin to undergo a fork without computational support.

What do others think?

Yu Xian, the founder of SlowMist, posted on social media that Luke Dashjr’s views on Bitcoin core development were a bit provocative. If everything goes as he wishes, future versions of Bitcoin will fix what he considers to be vulnerabilities: the issue of sequence/message is a vulnerability of Bitcoin, a form of SLianGuaim attack. He then followed up with another tweet saying: personally, I don’t think it’s necessary to fix this. The impact brought about by accidentally opening this Pandora’s Box through the introduction of Taproot (a good thing) is not just a bunch of SLianGuaim, but also about the vibrancy of the Bitcoin ecosystem, which is not just about sequence/message. Of course, if this is fixed, it can open up the Bitcoin ecosystem better with compatible solutions, but long-term pain is not as good as short-term pain.

Star Xu, the founder of OKEx, said that this would force the Bitcoin community to migrate to SRC20 or the Lightning Network’s Taproot assets. In any case, OKEx will continue to build to support the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Conclusion

Due to the balance of power between developers, miners, and users in the Bitcoin ecosystem, even if Bitcoin Core developers decide to fix Taproot and disable the message feature, it will be difficult to change anything without the support of miners and users.

Furthermore, Stratum V2 itself allows miners to customize block templates, so miners who don’t like the message feature can choose not to include message transactions. Perhaps the message feature of Bitcoin will continue to thrive.

But considering the performance and positioning of Bitcoin, “SLianGuaim attack” is also a reality. Bitcoin will ultimately have to withstand the test of “SLianGuaim attack”. Whether Bitcoin can withstand it is up to the Bitcoin community.

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