Bitcoin Ordinals community debates fix after inscription validation bug


Some solutions are being discussed to fix a code error found in Bitcoin (BTC)-Ordinals native protocol that has prevented more than 1,200 registrations from being validated.

While almost everyone in the Ordinals community agrees that these signup requests should be reintroduced, the community is debating whether or not they should be added retroactively.

The error came from the protocol's indexing function only counting entries that were in the first entry of a transaction sent up to and including protocol version 0.5.1.

A prominent Ordinals member known on Twitter as "Leonidas.og" summarized the pros and cons of each solution in a tweet on April 10, just days after the affair it was first made public on April 5 by GitHub user "veryordinally".

The first solution is to select a block height to retroactively index so-called "orphaned" entries from entry number 420.285 onwards, which is roughly where the first orphaned entry was identified.

"This feels like the 'purist' solution because it means that the ordinal protocol would correctly match the logical order in the chain," Leonidas.og explained, despite acknowledging that the reorganization "may cause other complications."

The alternative is to not change the registration numbers that have already been validated and choose a block height to add these orphaned registrations at some point in the future, Leonidas.og explained:

โ€œThis would not change any existing registration numbers, so the ~1,200 orphans would not be officially assigned registration numbers in the protocol. It would be up to the market to assess them as 'print errors' or notโ€.

Another member of the Ordinals GitHub community, "Yilak" argument in favor of not changing the order because only a fraction of registration owners have been affected.

Related: Bitcoin Ordinals Daily Signups Rise Due to 'BRC-20 Tokens'

At the time of writing this report, 67.5% of 1,266 voters are in favor of not changing registration numbers according to a Twitter poll created by Leonidas.og.

On April 8, the number of Bitcoin Ordinals signups surpassed one million according to data of the Dune cryptanalysis platform. It came just days after new daily registrations hit a record of more than 76,300 on April 4.

Ordinals are considered digital artifacts. on the Bitcoin network, similar to non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and can compromise images, PDF, video or audio formats.

Magazine: Unstable currencies: decouplings, bank runs and other risks loom