The emergence of Bitcoin Ordinals in 2023 as nonfungible tokens (NFTs) on the Bitcoin blockchain has sparked a significant debate, causing a rift in the previously united Bitcoin community. This division has raised concerns, especially as major Wall Street firms are preparing to issue Bitcoin ETFs. To avoid further fragmentation, supporters of Bitcoin Ordinals are considering a hard fork of Bitcoin, similar to Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV, to keep their NFT on-chain dream alive without the risk of their collectibles being nullified by Bitcoin core developers.
Hard forks occur when a blockchain splits into two. The original fork continues on as the pre-existing protocol and ledger, while the new fork changes the protocol in some way and then rolls it out as a coin, often claiming to be the real Bitcoin as Satoshi Nakamoto envisioned. For example, Bitcoin Cash forked from Bitcoin, and Bitcoin SV forked from Bitcoin Cash. Both communities argue that Satoshi saw increased block size as the only way forward for scalability.
The current debate around Bitcoin and Bitcoin Ordinals involves two entrenched factions. Bitcoin maximalists argue that Ordinals undermine Bitcoin’s primary use as digital gold or electronic currency, viewing Ordinals as a bug or even an outright attack on the Bitcoin protocol. On the other hand, proponents of Ordinals argue that they were made possible by Bitcoin protocol changes made by core developers themselves, including Bitcoin transaction format changes in the Segregated Witness (SegWit) upgrade and the Taproot upgrade. They believe Ordinals represent innovation.
Bitcoin core developers are planning to make Ordinals impossible to add to transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain with Bitcoin Core v27, thus repairing the perceived bug. Pre-existing Ordinals would remain as the pending change in Bitcoin Core v27 only stops new Ordinals from being minted. This development shows that developers and nodes, not so much Ordinals buyers and miners, have the ultimate say as to what Bitcoin’s protocol looks like.
Given the potential elimination of future Ordinals at the protocol level, the Bitcoin Ordinal camp could follow the examples set by Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV by forking and building a Bitcoin Ordinals chain without the threat of core developers nullifying their hard work. This approach has been favored by both Bitcoin Cash and BitcoinSV, as the Bitcoin community united against anything that resembled a wholesale change at the protocol level.
Bitcoin is becoming increasingly divided at this critical juncture in its history. The infighting makes the incumbent Bitcoin community look immature and risks Bitcoin losing its core principles of decentralization and financial sovereignty as institutional money comes pouring in on a new scale. Now is the time for the Bitcoin community to be united. Now is the time for another hard fork to preserve Bitcoin as the world’s digital gold and/or electronic cash. A Bitcoin Ordinals chain is more likely to succeed than an all-out fight akin to the debate over block size. Moreover, Bitcoin miners are likely to favor an Ordinals chain after experiencing the heightened transaction fees that came in 2023 as Ordinals proliferated.
This News Article was automatically generated by Bob the Bot (AI)
| Information | Details |
|---|---|
| Geography | Europe |
| Countries | 🇦🇹 🇩🇪 |
| Sentiment | neutral |
| Relevance Score | 1 |
| People | Luke Leighton, Satoshi Nakamoto, Kadan Stadelmann, Max Keiser |
| Companies | Bitcoin SV, Bitcoin Cash, University of Vienna, Bitcoin, Wall Street, Berlin Institute of Technology, Cointelegraph, Komodo Platform |
| Currencies | Bitcoin |
| Securities | None |
