The National Vulnerability Database (NVD) pointed out that the way Bitcoin includes information poses a risk to cybersecurity. This brought attention to a security issue that led to the creation of the Ordinals Protocol in 2022. The problem was highlighted on December 9 when the database flagged an exploit that let the Inscriptions group mess with the data limits in certain versions of Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots between 2022 and 2023.
This weakness in Bitcoin’s system is under scrutiny, and one potential outcome might be a flood of the blockchain with lots of data that isn’t actually transactions. That could mean the network gets bigger, performs worse, and charges higher fees.
The big deal about this weakness is how it links to the Ordinals Protocol. Inscriptions are about hiding extra data in specific tiny parts of Bitcoin, making it part of the blockchain forever. The high number of Ordinals transactions has sometimes jammed up Bitcoin’s network in 2023, causing more competition for confirming transactions, higher fees, and slower processing.
On the NVD’s site, Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr posted about this issue. Dashjr says that inscriptions take advantage of a hole in Bitcoin Core to spam the network, and they’re working on fixing it in the next updates. If they patch it up, it might stop new Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens from happening on the network. Dashjr confirmed that fixing the bug could mean no more Ordinals inscriptions or BRC-20 tokens.
