Amid the ongoing discussion about the Ordinals mission and the debate about the kind of data that should be preserved on the Bitcoin Blockchain, the network mined its biggest block to date at almost 4MB, only containing 63 transactions. One of them included a 3.94MB ordinal inscription with the image of a magician and a non-fungible token, the NFT.
Small Block Supporters Voice Concerns Over 4MB Bitcoin Block With NFT Inscription
On February 1, 2023 Luxor Mining pool mined the largest block (#774,628) on the Bitcoin network, which was almost 3.96 MB. The mining pool took to Twitter to announce the discovery and the reason behind the block size.
“Last night, Luxor used its magical powers to release an ancient wizard from his cosmic jail, where he had been held captive for centuries,” the mining pool tweeted. “The anomaly could have been spotted by observers in the time chain, which could be something different than what was seen before. Are there others?” The tweet also included a photo of the “Tap Root Wizard”, attached to the block was ordinal inscription #652. Taproot was activated on the Bitcoin network on November 12, 2021 at block 709,632 peak and brought many new benefits to BTC users.
Block #774628, 3.96 MB has been added to Bitcoin by @LuxorTechTeam utilizing taproot with insects! The original document was only 2.77 MB. Here is the record of the biggest blocks: https://t.co/LsavqjLFEq
This is sure to set off some fireworks! We are on the brink of a new block battle 🤓
— Nikita Zhavoronkov (@nikzh) February 2, 2023
To put it simply, Taproot allows a group of people to sign a single digital signature. This makes transactions more private and secure. Since the creation of Ordinals, it has been discovered that by using a segregated witness (Segwit) in combination with Taproot, a block can be up to 4MB in size, surpassing the 1MB limit hardcoded into the Bitcoin blockchain. The largest block prior to this was Segwit’s 3.96MB = 2,765MB (#748,918) on August 11, 2022.
Questions Raised Over the Immutable Nature of Bitcoin and Potentially “Harmful” Content
Ordinals was already a contentious topic among bitcoin maximalists. The 4MB block containing only 63 transactions and a JPEG of a wizard caused further upset. For example, bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr, who referred to Ordinals as “spam”, quickly created a node patch to filter or censor it. “NOT a protocol change nor a soft fork/fork, just a harmless spam filter (if it works well),” Dashjr wrote. “It’s also a quick hack that isn’t ready for a press release. Core devs write the real thing.”
Many Bitcoin advocates were unhappy with the document block size, which was highlighted on the Reddit r/bitcoin thread. The top-voted comment read: “I’d rather see a block like this filled with real money transactions from thousands of people, rather than this nonsense.”
Another person agreed with this opinion, arguing that the Taproot scheme that created a 4MB block was dangerous. “This is not something to be celebrated – it’s a sign of something going wrong.”
The controversy concerning large blocks and the role of NFTs on Bitcoin’s blockchain continues. It will be interesting to see how the community responds to the recent 4MB block with an NFT inscription.
On February 2nd, 2023, a Bitcoin block of 4MB was mined by the Luxor Mining pool, sparking uproar amongst the crypto community. The block contained non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and an indecent picture inscribed on entry #668.
The news of the 4MB block was met with criticism from Bitcoin maximalists, with one person responding to Luxor’s tweet, saying “You can put a JPEG of terrible quality with zero inventive value on the Blockchain. Okay you can make the same silly picture 10,000 times smaller. Why make it 4MB? It is a joke; it could be a trolling prank.”
The controversy surrounding the 4MB block has highlighted the potential danger of a bad actor or automated miner cementing vile and disgusting things into the immutable, globally distributed, and unobjectionable Bitcoin blockchain.
What is your opinion on the 4MB block controversy? Do you think it is a menace to the blockchain or an innocent addition? Share your thoughts in the comments.
