In an almost two hour Twitter Space on July 7Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin praised the arrival of Bitcoin Ordinals, announcing it as an “organic return of building culture” to Bitcoin. This conversation, which also included Bitcoin advocates and Taproot Wizards stakeholders Eric Wall And Udi Wertheimerrevolved around the recent turmoil in the Bitcoin ecosystem caused by Ordinals.
A revitalized building culture
Buterin said he believes Bitcoin Ordinals are a decisive step against the “stagnant” politics within the Bitcoin network, indicating an emerging proactive and constructive culture. Despite early cultural disruptions, he sees these changes as ultimately necessary for progress within the Bitcoin community.
To address Bitcoin’s scalability issues and the challenges of processing medium-sized payments, Buterin came up with the idea of implementing different types of layer-2 solutions. Among these, it most notably supports rollups, a technology that consolidates multiple transactions into a single data entry before adding them to the blockchain. The rollup method has proven effective on Ethereum as it improves network efficiency by saving space, speeding up transaction speed and reducing costs. He believes Bitcoin could benefit from such innovation.
Buterin also praised the BRC-20 token standard on Bitcoin. Similar to the ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum, BRC-20 is an experimental token standard that enables the minting and trading of fungible tokens through Ordinals.
According to Buterin, these recent changes could lead to a renewed emphasis on tangible action within the Bitcoin network. They may counterbalance the “laser eye movement,” a term used to describe a subset of the Bitcoin community that focuses specifically on Bitcoin, often to the exclusion of other blockchain protocols. This faction tends to see Bitcoin as the only major player in Web3, rejecting other protocols and blockchains, especially NFTs and Ethereum, as inferior.
Buterin’s comments point to an exciting future where Bitcoin, armed with a revitalized building culture and an embrace of new technologies, continues to evolve and adapt in an ever-changing landscape.
Editor’s Note: This article was written by an nft now contributor in collaboration with OpenAI’s GPT-4.