Casey Rodarmor, the lead coder behind the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol, announced Tuesday that he is proposing a major change to the software, one that could be viewed with skepticism by the novice user base.
Revealed in a post on X Tuesday, Rodarmor specifically proposed prioritizing the canonical numbering system that assigns unique and coveted numbers to inscriptions created on the Bitcoin network.
Since the inception of the protocol, every digital artifact created using Ordinals has been assigned a unique inscription number. These numbers, similar to serial numbers, have become an essential part of the identity of digital art.
Lower numbered inscriptions have historically been considered more valuable, prompting collectors to seek these coveted positions within the numbering hierarchy. For example, Casey Rodarmor himself owns the highly sought after ‘Inscription 0’.
Notably, the change does not affect the numbering system that the protocol assigns to individual satoshis on the Bitcoin blockchain, which would still receive a separate numerical score based on their order in Bitcoin blocks.
Still, Rodarmor tried to calm the market in his comments on the change, expressing concern that efforts to maintain stable inscription numbers “have resulted in complicated code and hindered the development of the protocol.”
He continued: “The need to ensure that new changes do not alter the number of existing inscriptions has made the development process cumbersome and challenging.”
Rodarmor’s proposal could spark a lively debate within the Ordinals community, as well as among NFT collectors and crypto enthusiasts. However, it is noteworthy that Rodarmor itself believes that this system is already unstable.
Discussing previous attempts to solve the problems, such as adding negatively numbered “cursed inscriptions” to the protocol, he wrote:
Cursed inscriptions and negative inscription numbers have a number of disadvantages:
- An inscription number says nothing about the order in which the inscription was made.
- The logic required to keep track of which inscriptions are cursed is a source of bugs and complexity.
- “Blessing” cursed inscription types, that is, collectively deciding that after a certain block height, certain cursed inscription types will no longer be assigned negative numbers, but instead positive numbers, requires coordination.
- Cursed inscription numbers are permanently unstable, so a significant number of inscription numbers are already unstable even under the status quo.
Rodarmor’s solution would, in his own words, make existing inscription numbers “permanently unstable,” changing the way indexers would handle this information rather than eliminating it entirely.
Some market observers, such as Luxor’s Charlie Spears, supported this move, saying, “Inscription numbers are a shitcoin, and an overemphasis on number has led to poorly thought out protocol decisions and strange market dynamics.”
Time will tell whether the market agrees.
Notably, the proposal comes after a rare public appearance by Rodarmor at the recent Ordinals Summit in Singapore, where he discussed the protocol’s success and future innovations. As such, the pull request may be a signal that the developer is about to enter a period of renewed activity.