eli5

what's bitcoin ordinals and inscriptions all about?

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Imagine a dollar bill. Pragmatically speaking it's the same as any other dollar bill but it's identifiable by its serial number from the reserve. (Ordinal theory)

Now imagine drawing on a bill. You can draw anything that can fit with the single bill. (Inscription)

Now imagine a drawing on the first bill ever printed.

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First there was a rush to draw on as many early bills as possible. Now "artists" are flooding bills with drawings.

Despite having the same monetary value, bills are arbitrarily more valuable based on who drew on them and how low its serial number (satoshi) is.

This created a large market for drawings on dollar bills.

What started as a novel idea — and borderline exploit — has become a huge grift.

Most of the art is trite, rushed, unoptimized, and by all definitions arbitrary. The art is valued mostly by the satoshi and sometimes the creator.

It is flooding the chain with graffiti and goes against the purist vision of bitcoin.

One bitcoin core team member is vocally against it and it seems probable that it’ll get patched out.

This may result in a hard fork if ordinal enthusiasts decide to protect their bags, but I see it fading away into obscurity.

Ethscriptions is not dissimilar and will phase out should calldata be pruned out later on.

I like Adam Backs recent comments that you can’t stop it and you shouldn’t react to it, because that will just make people want to make ordinals even more.

highly unlikely anything gets patched out tbh

like em or not - ordinals are here to stay

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I’ll reduce my probability of a patch from probable to maybe (50/50). The ordinals movement is undeniable, but I also don’t think writing large blobs of data on the chain doesn’t come without consequences to the entire ecosystem. I don’t see how it scales well unless reasonable limits are enforced.

100%.

My gripe with ordinals is not the content (99% of ethereum-tracked "media" is also garbage) but rather the inefficient storage method.

Most ethereum collectibles are just pointers to off-chain storage. The harsh limitations lead to very creative solutions and innovations which imo makes for beautiful work.

1/2

appreciate the debate

Censorless, trustless exchange of value is at the heart of crypto - and Bitcoin.  

My bet is the miners will happily accept larger blocks in exchange for more revenue & fees.

If nothing else, this is good training for the Bitcoin social governance process.