The maxis are saying no to Ordinals
This past week Ordinal, an NFT protocol on the Bitcoin blockchain, sent the community into a storm of debate. Outlined in a CoinDesk article, the argument centres around whether or not NFTs are ‘good’ for Bitcoin, focusing on two questions. The first of which being, does the strain on transactions equal a net negative, despite the increased potential usefulness of the token? And secondly, does that same problem further distract us from Bitcoin’s sole and founding purpose? Which Satoshi would say is to facilitate financial transactions. I suggest you stop here to read the article, in order to better understand the commentary that will follow below.
At DISTRBTD, we don’t necessarily believe everything should be completely decentralized, but we do believe in a rigid definition of decentralization, and would like to hold those who claim it accountable. In this case, we’re feeling the need to remind the Bitcoin maximalists that their community was built on the credo of decentralization. It’s strange for us to see them push back against other communities doing what the protocol already permits them to do, as if they’d like to enforce a level of centralized censorship on the use case of NFTs. It seems these individuals aren’t interested in living by the double edged sword which they wield.
The point of Bitcoin and the blockchain it was founded upon is to remove the need for a centralized control of our money. But if money is simply data stored on a ledger, why are the limits of Bitcoin supposedly being challenged by an NFT protocol that’s built upon its own principles? They’re not. The demands and shouts of Bitcoin maximalists often ring like fear; and this is no exception. A truth that explains why they’re seeking censorship of ideas and code. Most of them, at least.
Many ‘Bitcoin Maxis’ are pro Ordinals, and Bitcoin NFTs, with some even claiming they’ll be good for the ecosystem. Miners also get to weigh in by choosing to have their nodes participate in the transactions. Some will and some won’t; a decentralized form of protest. The purist maxis are shouting.
One of the most interesting arguments is that Satoshi himself would quite likely oppose the NFTs. The rationale for this belief is that over a decade ago, when BitDNS (the Bitcoin version of .eth) was being created, Satoshi pushed back against the work going onto the Bitcoin blockchain, saying “Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn't scale.” However, this was long before the Lightning Network and the potential use-cases of NFTs came to be. It’s important to weigh the words of the technology’s founder, but when he/she is gone and their creation has grown far beyond them, it’s also important to take today’s context into mind.
As far as I can tell, Satoshi only voiced a lack of support for BitDNS, but never pushed to forcibly block it. Perhaps he would do the same today with the Ordinals protocol—but who’s to say—our Messiah is yet to return. I hope users of Ordinals go on to do whatever they would like to do on top of a decentralized system that permits it, and that nobody tries to stop them with any method beyond words.