In an interesting development, a Bitcoin Core developer claimed that a bug fix in the Bitcoin network could potentially halt the production of new Bitcoin Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens.
Ultimate Fix for Bitcoin Ordinals Bug
The Bitcoin Core Developer, Luke Dashjr, began by highlighting that inscriptions have been exploiting a Bitcoin vulnerability. Since 2013, Bitcoin Core code has allowed users to set limits on extra data size in transactions.
By disguising their data as program code, inscriptions have found a way to bypass this limit. As per Luke, the presence of Bitcoin inscriptions has been causing network congestion.
However, the developer said:
“This bug was recently fixed in Bitcoin Knots v25.1. It took longer than usual due to my workflow being severely disrupted at the end of last year (v24 was skipped entirely). Bitcoin Core is still vulnerable in the upcoming v26 release. I can only hope it will finally get fixed before v27 next year.”
Earlier today, Ocean, a decentralized mining protocol where Dashjr serves as Chief Technology Officer, released Bitcoin Knots v25.1. As per their tweet, the Bitcoin Knots upgrade addresses this exploited vulnerability.
Owing to the upgrade, Ocean believes its future blocks will have more genuine transactions. In fact, Ocean called Ordinals “a DOS attack” on Bitcoin.
BRC-20 Tokens Will Stop Being a Thing
When responding to some of the questions raised in the comment section, Luke Dashjr made some clarifications. Once the bug is fixed, BRC-20 tokens will cease to exist.
Secondly, this vulnerability is currently mainly a technical concern for Bitcoin but could eventually impact its security. Dashjr is only one in the long line of developers and Bitcoin enthusiasts in large opposition to inscriptions.
The Ordinal protocol was pioneered in Jan 2023 by Casey Rodarmor, enabling users to inscribe data and NFTs on Satoshis. Since their birth, Bitcoin has been experiencing issues with lots of delayed transactions. In early May this year, the pending transaction count went to as high as 500K owing to Ordinals and BRC-20 mania.