Background

ordinals is a bitcoin on-chain protocol that emerged in January 2023, and is based on the principle of numbering the 2,100 trillion sat of bitcoin and embedding text or files into the smallest unit of bitcoin sat. in a realistic sense, each smallest unit of bitcoin can be empowered with a sentence, an image or other file. The ordinals protocol allows inscription to be stored completely on-chain, inheriting all the features of Bitcoin.

At the same time this has caused opposition from some in the Bitcoin community, "**Ordinals are an attack on Bitcoin" (1), Bitcoin Core developer **[LukeDashjr](https://twitter.com/ LukeDashjr) (2) consider this an attack on Bitcoin. They have initiated a patch to filter ordinals, Ordisrespector(3), which Bitcoin node providers such as MyNode have now integrated into their own node software(4).

The opposing viewpoints are mainly in terms of ordinals abusing the Bitcoin chain and competing against the existing lightning network.

1. The Bitcoin white paper makes no mention of data preservation on the chain, only financial transactions. Many bitcoin believers treat the bitcoin whitepaper like a bible, and they believe that what Satoshi Nakamoto doesn't mention is what Satoshi Nakamoto doesn't support.

2. ordinals abusing the bitcoin chain, affecting block sizes, storing images to raise bitcoin rates. mempool.space shows that bitcoin block sizes have about doubled since February (5).

3. affecting lightning networks, they are also an attack on bitcoin fungibility, if everyone used serial numbers as the default way to connect to satellites at will, lightning network routing and coinjoin would disappear.

4. other disadvantages similar to ethereum nft, e.g. nft scams will be difficult to recover.

5. Full on-chain storage may store some illegal information that cannot be traced from a website or hosting agency. Bitcoin on-chain storage solutions are more decentralised than eth and the cost of committing fraud is less.

6. ordinals are expensive and mostly spam compared to other storage solutions.

Personally, I don't support the above, and my reasons are.

1. The Bitcoin white paper also does not mention data preservation, but neither does it argue against it. Unless Satoshi Nakamoto is a man from the future, he can't predict what will happen in a decade or so, and I don't think it's out of the question to try something in another direction.

2. "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks", what the first block of Bitcoin was recorded as. Proponents of Ordisrespector are not arguing that Bitcoin can't be used for data storage, rather, it can't be used for data storage on a large scale, because the first thing that needs to be guaranteed is Bitcoin's financial properties. But it works + it works well, and it will inevitably be used on a large scale.

3. ordinals have generated 1.04m usd in fees for bitcoin miners since they emerged (as of 2023.02.28) (6). The stakeholders in bitcoin are not only the node operators, but also the miners, who have a significant share of the voice, and for miners, ordinals are beneficial in terms of increasing revenue.

4. Ordisrespector emerged to prevent the ordinals protocol from causing block sizes to grow, but the filtering of the patch presupposes that the ordinals data needs to be loaded first. Ordisrespector is simply designed to stop ordinals, and its emergence does not control bitcoin blocks until it kills ordinals helps.

5. As for complete on-chain storage being used for evil, all I can say is that tools are innocent, it's people who do evil.

6. As for issues affecting lightning networks and coinjoin etc., I believe that the market chooses, and if a better alternative comes along, the ones that don't fit the market are bound to be eliminated. The same, if ordinals emerges, the future evolves into a development trend of bitcoin ecology, other projects should also actively adjust. ordinalsbot in the service of the user at the same time, the user can choose to use the lightning network payment, which for the promotion of lightning network also has a positive effect, can not be because there are hidden problems, and the new thing to kill.

Summing up.

Personally, I am in favour of the ordinals agreement. It would be very damaging to the cohesiveness of the bitcoin community if every institution operated the market according to their own maximized interests, such as bitcoin node providers using Ordisrespector to protect their own interests.

ordinals may not succeed, but he represents a new direction, a more decentralised storage solution, even if there are some problems at this stage. This is enough to cause us enough concern to look at it with a developmental perspective, and there may be ways of bitcoin nft that don't anger the bitcoin community in the future. For now, at least, ordinals offer a solution that has never been seen before.

references：

1.https://semisol.dev/ordinals/

2.https://twitter.com/LukeDashjr

3.https://gist.github.com/luke-jr/4c022839584020444915c84bdd825831

4.https://medium.com/@CryptoCellLabs/比特币新战争-bitcoins-new-wars-43a1669391c0

5.https://mempool.space/zh/graphs/mining/block-sizes-weights

6.https://dune.com/dataalways/ordinals