Can the inscription disappear?How much Bitcoin Core developer privilege is there?

Original authors: Jaleel, Kaori, BlockBeats

Original Editor: Zhang Wen, BlockBeats

On December 6, Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr posted on social media that Inscription was using a vulnerability in the Bitcoin Core client to spam the blockchain. Since 2013, Bitcoin Core has allowed users to set additional data size limits when forwarding or mining transactions. By obfuscating its data into program code, the inscription bypasses this restriction.

To put it simply, this experienced BTC client developer thinks that the inscription track, represented by ORDI, which is now in the top 50 by market capitalization, is a bug and can be fixed.

According to Luke Dashjr, "This vulnerability was recently fixed in BTC Knots v2 5.1. Since my workflow was severely disrupted at the end of last year (v2 4 was skipped entirely), the fix took longer than usual. In the upcoming v2 6 release, Bitcoin Core still has vulnerabilities. I can only hope that it will get a final fix before v2 7 next year. 」

Luke Dashjr made it clear in his reply to the message below that tweet that if this bug is fixed, the Ordinals inscription and BRC 20 tokens will cease to exist.

As a BTC OG, Luke Dashjr has been an outspoken critic of the Ordinals protocol. In February, Dashjr tweeted that “the Ordinals protocol is an attack on BTC.” In May, when the first wave of inscription craze appeared, opposition from Dashjr and Bitcoin Core was also seen as an uncertain factor in the development of inscriptions.

However, the previous scolding war did not spark a lot of discussion, after all, Ordinals is still a product of market bias. But now the ORDI, which has risen 20,000 times, is already a national meme, and Luke Dashjr’s words have evaporated $300 million from ORDI’s market value in a matter of minutes.

The reason for the market’s fear is obvious: does the Bitcoin core team really have the power to change the code at will?

Luke Dashjr: An early developer who joined in 2011

Is Luke Dashjr qualified to comment on BTC? Luke Dashjr met BTC in 2011 and soon joined the project as a developer. His programming knowledge quickly led him to become a major BTC developer, helping BTC achieve early construction. His early contributions to BTC software focused on troubleshooting the security, performance, and advanced features of Bitcoin Core.

Sorted by number of commits, Luke Dashjr is ranked 14th in the Bitcoin Core code contributor rankings as of now.

As an early developer on board, Luke Dashjr was involved in almost every important event BTC the early days.

Due to a software bug in Bitcoin Core, Dashjr was one of the first to discover BTC hard fork in 2013. In 2014, Dashjr began to play a bigger role in the BTC ecosystem, as it used a modified version of BFG Miner that allowed miners to work with higher performance than other miners at the time.

In 2016, Dashjr launched BIP-2, a major improvement over the BIP format proposed by another BTC developer and renowned cryptographer, Amir Taaki. During 2016 and 2017, Dashjr was also a key player in activating Segwit in the BTC. Dashjr’s other contributions to BTC development include BIP-22 and BIP-23, which are designed to optimize the block generation structure and improve efficiency within mining pools, respectively.

Luke Dashjr;

Going back to the previous article, Luke Dashjr mentioned that “this vulnerability was recently fixed in BTC Knots v2 5.1 and hopefully it will be finally fixed before v2 7 next year”, this Bitcoin Knots is a complete BTC client, and the original idea came from Luke Dashjr.

Luke Dashjr is also a cybersecurity extremist. In fact, he argues that BTC has security vulnerabilities in the current state of the network because its network is not yet fully decentralized. For this reason, it invites everyone who uses BTC to install their own full node.

Why don’t you like Ordinals?

Luke Dashjr’s dislike of the Ordinals stems from his strong belief in preserving BTC fundamentalism.

At the end of 2022, software engineer Casey Rodarmor created the “Ordinals” protocol, which numbers the smallest unit in a BTC, “satoshis”, and stores file metadata through taproot, creating a unique NFT. On March 8, an anonymous developer named @domo released the BRC-20 protocol, which could create a fungible token standard on top of the Ordinals protocol. Subsequently, this year’s inscription boom was set off, and it also led to the explosion of BTC ecology.

On Feb. 1, BTC mining company Luxor said it had mined the largest BTC block ever mined, which was 3.96 MB, just below BTC’s limit of 4 MB. The block contains a meme NFT based on the original “magic internet money” called Taproot Wizards.

BTC ecosystem developers such as Luke Dashjr believe that this will cause the rapid expansion of the size of the BTC blockchain, and the equipment requirements for running full nodes will greatly increase, resulting in a decrease in the number of full nodes on the entire network and a decrease in censorship resistance. At the same time, unexpectedly large transactions and huge blocks will impact ecological facilities such as wallets, mining pools, and browsers, resulting in abnormalities in some facilities, such as the failure of some transactions to be resolved normally. In addition, in order to reduce the time it takes to synchronize and validate huge transactions and blocks, mining pools or miners may choose not to download and produce blocks without verifying the transactions and blocks, bringing security risks.

They even harshly criticized Taproot Wizard for this behavior, saying: "This is an attack on BTC, BTC blocks have a 1 M limit, Taproot Wizard’s 4 M data is put on the chain in a witness, blocks and transactions are bypassed the 1 M limit, 4 M is OK, 400 M is OK!

On February 28 of this year, Luke Dashjr said on social media that there were auction sites that used his name and code to create and sell “misleading” NFTs without his consent. The screenshot shows that the NFT contains an image of the code he wrote, which was sold for 0.41 BTC on an auction site.

"I am not involved in the creation and sale of this or any other NFT, and I do not consent to the use of my code or my name for this purpose. Luke Dashjr tweeted a clarification worsening criticism, "Due to the misrepresentations involved and confusion with the actual buyer, I strongly demand that 100% of the auction proceeds be returned to the buyer. 」

It can be seen that Luke Dashjr is a developer with almost obsessive high requirements for a BTC healthy ecosystem. Dashjr believes that Ordinals are not just spam clogging the network, they are also an attack on BTC fungibility, and accepting their existence would compromise the Lightning Network and CoinJoin.

And this is the most unacceptable outcome for BTC maximizers. In May, Luke Dashjr wrote on his Github account that he was very annoyed by the BRC-20 and meme coin hype, “In order to address Ordinals, immediate corrective action is needed and should have been provided long ago.” 」

Luke Dashjr GitHub interface;

In an email sent to other BTC developers and miners, Dashjr proposed to integrate a “spam filtering” mechanism into Taproot transactions in order to stop the proliferation of Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens in the BTC network. “It was time to take action a few months ago,” he said. Spam filtering has always been a standard part of Bitcoin Core. It’s a bug that the existing filter doesn’t extend to Taproot transactions because it’s a bug fix and doesn’t really need to wait for a major version to be released. 」

According to Dashjr, people can own NFTs and collectibles on BTC without spamming or attacking the network, and “Taproot actually makes that much easier.” On the Bitcointalk forum, many people discussed the adoption of a soft fork to “enforce a strict Taproot validation script size” and how the protocol could filter content that they deemed “spam”, or even a hard fork to revoke Taproot. But how easy is BTC hard fork?

Do developers have the final say in the development of BTC?

Before we get into the questions “Who needs the nod to merge a piece of code into a BTC repository?” and “Who controls the core repository of BTC?”, it’s important to be clear that you control a GitHub repository.

For the GitHub repository of an open source project, developers with these two permissions have the greatest “power”, namely merge code permission and commit permission.

Having merge code permissions means that their keys are added to the Trusted Keys List on GitHub, giving them specific permissions. For the Bitcoin Core project, when a developer’s key is added to this list, they gain the ability to merge code. This means that they can incorporate code changes that have already been reviewed and approved into the Bitcoin Core codebase.

As a result, having the ability to merge code means they can have a direct impact on the final version of the Bitcoin Core software. It’s a recognition of the developer’s trust and responsibility, as the ability to merge code allows them to directly influence the final version of BTC software. Developers with this permission are typically experienced and reputable contributors who follow a rigorous quality control and review process when merging code.

The difference between code commit rights and merge code permissions is that merge rights allow developers to decide which code will eventually be included in the main branch of the project. So, while commit permissions are an important milestone, merge permissions play a more critical role in the decision-making of the project and the formation of the final product. Both are important, but in terms of influence and responsibility, combined authority is often seen as the superlative.

Who controls the core code of the BTC

Who can merge code into Bitcoin Core’s GitHub repository?

Bitcoin Core developers are developers who have direct access to merge and modify BTC codebase, usually as maintainers or long-term contributors to the project. For example, Wladimir J. van der Laan, as one of the main maintainers of the project, has permission to merge code.

Pieter Wuille and Marco Falke left on July 8, 2022 and February 23, 2023, respectively, relinquishing their maintenance privileges and removing their keys from the trusted keyset via BTC GitHub request.BTC

Following the departure of Pieter Wuille and Marco Falke, only three Bitcoin Core developers, Wladimir J. van der Laan, Michael Ford, and Hennadii Stepanov, currently have access to modify the Bitcoin Core code.

However, although these developers have permission to merge code, they typically follow a rigorous code review and community consensus process. Their job is more to coordinate and review contributions than to unilaterally make changes. BTC community places a high value on consensus and transparency, and any major code changes are widely discussed and reviewed by the community.

When a piece of code is merged into BTC codebase, who needs to “nod”?

For a piece of code to be merged into the BTC codebase, it needs to go through a rigorous and detailed process that ensures the quality of the proposal and the consensus of the community. Here are the main steps in this process:

1. Write the proposal and code: First, the developer needs to write a detailed proposal document. This document should clearly describe the motivation, technical details, impact assessment, and any potential issues or challenges of the proposal.

2. Community Discussion: After a code proposal is submitted to the BTC community, it is discussed and reviewed by community members (including developers, miners, investors, and users). This stage is key to ensuring the feasibility of the proposal and gathering feedback.

3. Modifications and improvements: Based on feedback from the community, the authors of the code may need to make modifications and improvements to the proposal.

4. Vote and Reach Consensus: Some important improvements, especially those related to the BTC protocol itself, require a certain level of consensus among community members. This usually involves the support of miners, who need to show their support for the proposal by including a specific signal in the block they mine.

5. Code implementation: Once a consensus is reached, the code will be reviewed by the Bitcoin Core developer team. This step requires ensuring the quality and security of the code.

6. Merge into codebase: After approval, the code will be merged into the BTC’s official codebase.

7. Deployment and Activation: Finally, the new code needs to be deployed into their systems by miners and node operators. For protocol-level changes, there is usually an activation threshold that will only take effect when enough network participants upgrade to the new version.

Judging from the block size wars of the past, there is no single person or entity that can directly confirm and decide whether a BIP has reached consensus or can be merged into the codebase. Rather, it’s a process involving the BTC community, which includes collaboration and consensus from multiple key groups in addition to developers and moderators:

Miners, in particular, can be decisive for those BIP proposals that involve protocol changes. Miners show their support for BIP by including specific signals in the blocks they mine. If miners with a specific threshold do not choose to support the proposal, this will not usually be considered consensus.

Full node operators also play an important role in the consensus formation process, showing their support by upgrading to a software version that supports the new BIP, and the increase in the number of nodes indicates the broad acceptance of the proposal by the community. In addition, while BTC users and community members are not directly involved in the decision to merge code, their opinions and discussions are critical to building consensus, and they can voice their opinions through community forums, mailing lists, and social media platforms.

BTC back to the 2017 fork moment?

Of course, as mentioned earlier, the most influential of these are the miners.

While miners do not have access to the Bitcoin Core code, they own the mining rigs, and miners decide which version of the BTC software their rigs to run. Moreover, the miner community is getting larger and larger, and they already have the ability to play with developers. In 2015, Bitcoin Core developers proposed to change the upper limit of the block size from 1 M to 2 M, but this proposal was rejected by Chinese miners on the grounds that the bandwidth in China was insufficient to support 2 M blocks. Miners are the service providers in this system, and they will package every BTC transfer so that the BTC system can function normally, which can be said to occupy a very important position.

And, of course, the day that went down in history as BTC community’s most famous hard fork. On August 1, 2017 at 8 p.m., a fork led by BCH miners began, and they implemented a hard fork starting with a block of 478558 height, and six hours later the first BCH block was mined by the ViaBTC microbit mining pool, and Bitcoin Cash was officially born.

Even if there is a hard fork, then everyone will vote for the BTC that meets everyone’s expectations with their real money. Therefore, although Bitcoin Core developers have the management rights of the code, due to the open source nature of the BTC software and the decentralization of the BTC, no team or person can fully control the BTC.

Miners’ money bags are untouchable

To put it bluntly, it is impossible for the miners to make the inscription disappear.

As the third-largest mining pool operator, the voice of Yuchi co-founder Shenyu has always been seen as representing the miners’ position, and after Luke Dashjr said that the inscription uses the Bitcoin Core vulnerability to send spam to the blockchain, Shenyu has repeatedly commented in the community: "BTC is not a ETH workshop, and what the developers say doesn’t count. 」

It is reported that Foundry USA, which ranks first in the hashrate ranking of Bitcoin mining pools, is a supporter of Luke Dashjr, but AntPool, which ranks second, and ViaBTC, who ranks fourth, have always opposed Luke Dashjr, so the position of F2 Pool, which ranks third, is crucial.

In previous bull markets, miners didn’t have to worry about earning at all. But in a bear market, miners’ earnings are a bit bleak.

In June 2022, the average daily income of miners in BTC was only $27.19 million, compared to the average daily income of miners in November 2021 of about $62 million, and the average daily income of miners in BTC has fallen by 56%. Due to the unsatisfactory income of miners, the computing power level of the entire BTC network was also affected, and the computing power of BTC fell by more than 10% at that time, and the number of blocks generated per hour also decreased to 5.85 BTC.

What’s more, with the BTC block reward halving in 2024, if the BTC price moves badly, then BTC miners will face potential profitability problems.

However, the emergence of BRC-20 and the hot trading of inscriptions have allowed miners to have a considerable increase in fees in the context of an uncertain bear market, and mining machines are better sold, and they are direct beneficiaries.

On-chain data shows that the average transaction fee per transaction began to increase significantly in May due to BRC-20 transactions BTC from an initial $2 to a high of $31. According to The Block Pro, BTC miners’ revenue increased by 30.1% to $1.15 billion in November, while a record 8.34 million Ordinals-related transactions occurred in November, generating about $38.7 million in revenue for BTC miners, according to The Block Pro.

BTC miner fees in 2023, Source: BitlnfoCharts

Speaking to the media, Mati Greenspan, a BTC OG, former eToro executive and founder of Quantum Economics, said: "I spoke to a miner yesterday and he said that he had doubled his income, which is good, especially before the halving, so it’s good for miners. Obviously, as the biggest beneficiaries of the BTC ecological outbreak, the miners are clutching their money bags and will definitely not let the inscriptions disappear in the BTC ecology.

Defending the inscription, what are the voices of the community?

A quote from Luke Dashjr sparked a wave of discussion in the community.

The mainstream view of the Chinese community is that the outbreak of the BTC ecology has caused miners’ income to soar, and in the BTC ecology, miners dominate, “Asian inscriptions are hot, American miners make a lot of money, European and American developers do not recognize it, and European and American developers and European and American miners must not fight”, most people are watching the next development with a play-watching mentality.

@evilcos, the founder of Slowmist Technology, doesn’t think there’s any need to fix this bug, he said, "Due to the introduction of Taproot (a good thing), the impact of accidentally opening this magic box is not only a bunch of SPAM, but also the activity of the BTC ecosystem, which is not just a set of serial numbers/inscriptions. Of course, if this is patched, there can be compatible solutions to better open up the BTC ecosystem, and the long pain is better than the short pain. 」

Crypto analyst @thecryptoskanda commented on Luke Dashjr’s tweet: “We don’t see Satoshi’s vision here. What is seen is just an awakened developer trying to put his own morbidly good or bad Walkerist values above the original consensus of Satoshi Nakamoto. How can you still call BTC the most decentralized currency after this?”

Influenced by the recent inscription frenzy, the Chinese community’s views on Luke Dashjr are more of a disapproving attitude, with crypto KOL @ 11 dizhu saying that “no one can represent BTC, you have your ideas, others have other people’s ideas, it’s really not a hard fork.” 」

In the English-speaking community, many people say that the BTC is now heavily congested and users have to pay very high gas fees, saying that they “hope developers can find a way to fix the vulnerabilities that are being exploited”. Cryptographer @Elder 24601 calls the “inscription” some kind of dust attack that can be fixed by increasing the default threshold (currently 546 sats).

Some crypto users have commented that they support Luke Dashjr’s censorship because they missed the entire BRC-20 outbreak.

As mentioned earlier, this isn’t the first time the crypto community has debated the existence of Ordinals NFTs and BRC-20, and there were opposition at the time that if Ordinals continued to have a huge impact on the BTC network, there was an option to fork BTC to modify or remove the Taproot option.

In May, DeFi Watch founder Chris Blec said that if enough BTC ecosystem participants (users, node operators, miners) agree that BTC should fork in a way that reduces spam transactions, it won’t be censorship. "You can still mine and use the current fork and mint your stupid jpg there. 」

Behind these controversies is not just about the technology, but also about the purpose of BTC and the philosophy behind it. Governing decentralized open source projects remains a challenge.

As we all know BTC there is no single actual controller, and the governance structure of the BTC is made up of users who pay transaction fees, miners who build BTC blockchains, and node operators who verify transaction ledgers. This decentralized structure goes some way to keeping BTC secure and decentralized, but it also poses challenges for governance. Needless to say, the position of miners is more based on the incentive level, and they choose the consensus on the future of the BTC based on the incentives they receive.

Despite Luke Dashjr’s clear stance, it is clear that the BTC community has different voices about the future of the inscription, and the power of the Bitcoin Core developers cannot make the inscription disappear.

Even in the worst-case scenario, the BTC community could face a fork similar to 2017 again. But compared to then, community members have accumulated valuable experience and insight. This time, all will come with a deeper understanding and a more mature strategy to deal with the challenges that may arise.

“Defend” or “Sacrifice” inscriptions?BTC story is far from over.