Something Weird Just Happened on the Bitcoin Ordinals Protocol

Article source, here.

TL;DR

• The Bitcoin Ordinals protocol allows metadata to be attached - or ‘inscribed’ - to a specific Bitcoin transaction.

• A developer, who goes by the name ‘Super Testnet,’ just initiated a transaction that had no input or output: inscription number 3492721.

• Super Testnet has just kind of messed the order up by 1 making all future ‘collectible inscriptions’ questionable.

• As for any real damage to the Bitcoin network or crypto on a larger scale - there isn’t any.

Full Story

The Bitcoin Ordinals protocol is weird at the best of times.

It allows metadata to be attached - or ‘inscribed’ - to a specific Bitcoin transaction.

Or better yet, users can add code to their Bitcoins.

Since the creation of Ordinals earlier this year, people have put all sorts of things on the Bitcoin blockchain - from pictures, to games, and even 'live snapchat-style webcam filters.'

But something really weird just happened on the Ordinals protocol.

A developer, who goes by the name ‘Super Testnet,’ just initiated a transaction that had no input or output: inscription number 3492721.

‘Nothing’ was validated, as if it was ‘something.’

Okay, okay, so what does this all mean?

For one, it seems like a bug in the Ordinals protocol.

Attempting to validate a transaction which has literally no metadata associated and comes from a Bitcoin address with no SATs (the smallest denomination of BTC) in it seems like an edge case that the Ordinals developers hadn’t considered.

Secondly, it resulted in the Ordinals’s inscription numbering system crashing which was quickly fixed.

There are some people out there who collect things like the ‘100,000th inscription’ either for fun, or to sell.

Super Testnet has just kind of messed the order up by 1 making all future ‘collectible inscriptions’ questionable.

(And btw, here’s how they did it).

As for any real damage to the Bitcoin network or crypto on a larger scale - there isn’t any.

Hackers gonna hack - but fortunately, there’s nothing to worry about here!