Prominent Bitcoin Core developer and casual critic Luke Dashinger may have a change of heart about NFT-like assets. Or at least his company has moved past its own strong position around Ordinals.
On Thursday, Ocean-the company behind the mining pool of the same name- said that issuers can now decide whether they want to process Bitcoin blocks containing non-cash transactions. Previously, the pool prohibited such actions.
Although the ad doesn't mention its name, many bitcoiners speculate that the “spam” mentioned in the ad refers to the ocean of wildly popular spam that will flood the network in 2023.
Originally launched in January by co-Bitcoin Core developer Casey Rodermore, digital assets similar to NFTs are digital assets written on satoshi, the smallest denomination of Bitcoin. They have become controversial among some Bitcoiners, even though they charge high fees to miners.
“Decentralized Bitcoin is a Bitcoin where miners decide,” Ocean tweeted. “Ocean's ultimate goal is to make this a reality, and today, we're one step closer to our vision of building a decentralized prototype.”
Ocean, which recently raised a $6.2 million seed round led by Twitter and Block co-founder Jack Dorsey, says it will offer several block template policies to give miners control over mining.
With the update, Ocean says, miners can choose from three block template policy options: Ocean recommended, focusing on what the company calls “real” minimal spam; Bitcoin Core with “Ordisrespector” spam filter; And the unmodified Bitcoin Core, mirroring other pools with fewer financial transactions but more “spam” ie casual and BRC-20 token transactions.
“Merry Christmas,” DashJer tweeted in response to a tweet from Ordinals fan (and Taproot Wizards co-founder) Udi Wertheimer about the update.
While some of Ordinal's fans took a victory lap, others saw his comments as less of a rhetoric and more of an underhand dig.
Will Foxley, host of the MiningPod podcast, told Decrypt that “it's strange for the ocean to say that blocks included with regular transactions have ‘minor' financial transactions.” They usually have more fees, and therefore higher turnover.
“Too small,” tweeted Leonidas, an NFT historian and casual collector.
It's Luke Dashiere's way of bending the knee to the ordinal while Leonidas is still saving face. “With 55% of Bitcoin transactions handled in the previous 7 days and prominent members of the Bitcoin community like Adam Buck throwing their support behind the norm, we've given Ocean no choice.
“This is probably the closest we'll get to waving the white flag on Luke's campaign to censor formal transactions,” he continued. “JPEGs are here to stay on Bitcoin and the entire ecosystem is now celebrating.”
A longtime Bitcoin core developer and opponent of Ordinals, Dashjr has labeled writings on the Bitcoin blockchain “spam” and has previously suggested that Bitcoin developers implement a “spam filter” to block Ordinals transactions.
“Decentralized mining is essential to the long-term health of Bitcoin and can only be sustained when miners operate intelligent mining units,” Dashjar said.
Ocean Mining has not yet responded to Decrypt's request for comment.
While detractors have complained about trivial articles clogging up the network, more than 50 million articles have been created since January, including articles tied to BRC-20, a benchmark for fungible tokens created on the Bitcoin blockchain. BRC-20 has led to the proliferation of meme coins created on top of Bitcoin.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win,” Wertimer tweeted, echoing a famous quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi and other historical figures.
Edited by Andrew Hayward.
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