Bitcoin Developer's Anti-Spam NFT Proposal Rejected

• Debate over Bitcoin Proposal Ends with No Conclusive Action
• About the Proposal
• Proposal Abruptly Terminated
• Debate Over the Proposal
• The Aftermath

Debate over Bitcoin Proposal Ends with No Conclusive Action

A highly contentious proposal targeting the Bitcoin$42,260 -0.64% blockchain, which would have made minting NFTs and tokens more challenging, has been abruptly ended without any consequential action. This sudden halt has led to allegations of censorship by the primary advocate of the proposed change.

About the Proposal

The developer known as Luke Dashjr, who has contributed to Bitcoin for over ten years, initiated the proposal in September. The proposal surfaced just months after the emergence of Ordinals - a protocol allowing users to inscribe data onto the blockchain, such as NFTs or new token specifications. Due to the massive popularity of the Ordinals project, the Bitcoin network experienced increased congestion. Bitcoin-based NFTs, once only available on alternate blockchains like Ethereum$2,315 -2.42%, have since proven quite valuable, with a set of BitcoinShrooms recently selling for approximately $450,000 at a historic Sotheby's auction.

Dashjr submitted his proposal on the open-source developer platform Github with the goal of updating the widely-used Bitcoin Core software to be compatible with newer data-carrying styles. However, it quickly stirred up debate over whether the 14-year-old blockchain should remain a peer-to-peer payment network or if market forces should dictate transaction prioritization. Even professionals advocating for a more purist vision of the blockchain voiced doubts that Dashjr's proposal to filter out Ordinals transactions could gain support among Bitcoin miners, a critical element of the network's operation, who have profited from the notable increase in fees.

Proposal Abruptly Terminated

Several days ago, Ava Chow, a Bitcoin Core maintainer, ended further discussion on Dashjr's proposal, also known as a pull request or PR, without incorporating any new code. As specified on the webpage for the open-source Bitcoin Core project, maintainers are empowered to implement code changes agreed upon by the team.

In Chow's words: It's abundantly clear that this PR is controversial and, in its current state, has no hope of reaching a conclusion that is acceptable to everyone. At this point in time, I see no reason to leave this open and to continue to send notifications for the constant back-and-forth stalemate discussion.

Debate Over the Proposal

Meanwhile, another Bitcoin Core maintainer, Gloria Zhao, posted a summary of the Github debate, including a recap of the technical details. Dashjr's proposal primarily aimed to apply strict data-size limits more broadly to Bitcoin transactions, akin to the hard 80-byte limit applied to a specific data field known as OP_RETURN.

Lisa Neigut, a Blockstream developer who also instructs Bitcoin developer courses at Base58, posited, There's been a lot of talk about adding filters to keep Ordinals TXs out of bitcoin, and this is a pretty sophisticated way to do that. It would essentially make getting Ordinals into blocks very challenging to do using the normal TX delivery pipeline.

Zhao noted in her summary that the attempt to halt inscriptions as spam was rebutted by arguments that We cannot write code to detect all embedded data. Dashjr responded by tweeting that the objections to the PR had been duly addressed, and he accused Chow of censoring anyone wanting to reply.

The Aftermath

Dashjr, known for his long-standing campaign to remove what he once termed as data storage schemes from Bitcoin since at least 2014, recently made headlines when his company Mummolin raised $6.2 million in a seed funding round led by Block Inc.'s leader and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. Interestingly, last month, leaders of the company's Ocean bitcoin mining pool indicated that the new project might filter out many transactions involving Ordinals inscriptions.

The developer responded to requests for comment by sharing a link to a recent post on Github. In it, Dashjr wrote that the proposal to fix the bug was inappropriately closed due to social attacks, and added This remains an active issue that needs to be addressed. Multiple comments have already accumulated on the new thread, sparking a fresh debate on the subject.

Edited by Jonathan Stoker