When I first heard about this project on Twitter not all that many days ago, my initial reaction was: “well, at least it’s within the consensus rules, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it anyway, so let them have their fun and it will go away when the fad dies”. I have seen this reaction quite a bit, so I don’t think I was the only one. However, after thinking about it for a short while—and really, it should have been obvious from the start—this is not a very logical response. Inscriptions are an exploitation of a vulnerability in Bitcoin Core, and an attack on the Bitcoin network. I wanted to go over all of the comments and criticisms I’ve seen floating around the past few days in this short post. But first: what are we even talking about?
This is a very well written article. I was sitting in the camp of "let it be" and "who are we to decide what is good and bad for bitcoin?". Your framing of the concept of software, bug, vulnerability, and attack was a lightbulb for me. I like and agree with this, but still caution against my own hubris of pretending to know what can be, should be, or will be "best" for this transformational protocol. I don't like inscriptions. They definitely felt like an attack, but after reflection on the matter I do not believe this attack materially impacts the direction or magnitude of the state's end game with Bitcoin. If anything it might accelerate certain aspects...but what will come will come with or without inscriptions.
This is a very well written article. I was sitting in the camp of "let it be" and "who are we to decide what is good and bad for bitcoin?". Your framing of the concept of software, bug, vulnerability, and attack was a lightbulb for me. I like and agree with this, but still caution against my own hubris of pretending to know what can be, should be, or will be "best" for this transformational protocol. I don't like inscriptions. They definitely felt like an attack, but after reflection on the matter I do not believe this attack materially impacts the direction or magnitude of the state's end game with Bitcoin. If anything it might accelerate certain aspects...but what will come will come with or without inscriptions.