I'm not too much into this, just checked a quick ChatGPT summary of the debate.
⚔️ The Ordinals Debate in Bitcoin
What Ordinals are
A protocol that numbers individual sats and lets people inscribe arbitrary data (images, text, tokens) into Bitcoin blocks via SegWit/Taproot.
Enables Bitcoin-native NFTs, meme coins, and permanent data storage.
The Supporters’ View
Innovation & new use cases: Bitcoin isn’t just money, it can be a foundation for art, collectibles, and tokenization.
Miner revenue boost: High Ordinals activity drives up transaction fees, which helps secure Bitcoin as block subsidies shrink.
Permissionless ethos: Bitcoin is supposed to be neutral — anyone should be free to use it without gatekeeping.
The Critics’ View (e.g. Luke Dashjr / Bitcoin Knots)
Spam & bloat: Inscriptions fill blocks with non-financial data, raising fees for ordinary payments.
Against Bitcoin’s purpose: The base layer should prioritize financial transactions, not NFTs or memes.
Centralization risks: Larger blocks → bigger storage/processing requirements → fewer people can run nodes.
Policy response: Bitcoin Knots enforces stricter relay rules (e.g. 42-byte OP_RETURN) and filters some inscription transactions.
The Broader Tension
Bitcoin Core v30 (coming 2025) will loosen limits, making inscriptions easier.
Bitcoin Knots is rising in popularity (~18% of nodes) as a counterweight, keeping “anti-spam” defaults.
This creates a philosophical and technical split:
Bitcoin as neutral, general-purpose ledger (pro-Ordinals).
Bitcoin as lean, monetary-only system (anti-Ordinals).
âś… In one line:
The Ordinals debate is really about what Bitcoin should be:
A neutral, permissionless base layer for all kinds of data and innovation, or
A strictly monetary network optimized only for peer-to-peer cash and settlement.
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That being said I'm on the side of Luke, because I think Ordinals/etc are not good for Bitcoin because of the reasons above.
Is there anything missing?
