According to Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, the introduction of Ordinals in Bitcoin signifies the resurgence of a builder culture within the network.
Buterin shared his thoughts during a discussion on Twitter on July 7, where he engaged with Bitcoin proponents Eric Wall and Udi Wertheimer. He expressed his appreciation for Ordinals and the BRC-20 token standard, seeing them as a rejection of stagnant politics that exist in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Buterin believes that Ordinals are bringing back a culture of action and pushing back against the laser-eye movement, which he considers to be a positive development.
During an extended conversation that lasted almost two hours, Eric Wall brought up scalability concerns related to Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. Wall argued that the Lightning Network cannot handle future user growth and has frequent failures while processing even “medium-sized” payments.
In response, Vitalik Buterin proposed that the focus should be on implementing different types of layer-2 solutions along with finding ways to enhance the efficiency of the Bitcoin core layer.
Wertheimer expressed his belief that the implementation of rollups could lead to a notable and intriguing unintended consequence.
Wertheimer stated that if rollups were implemented in Bitcoin, it would also enable an execution environment where smart contracts could be utilized. Wall and Wertheimer, who are significant proponents of the Ordinals project Taproot Wizards, consistently advocate for enhancing the capabilities of the Bitcoin network.
Their position has faced criticism from Bitcoin purists who argue that NFTs and smart contracts on the Bitcoin network dilute its core function as a decentralized peer-to-peer payment system. One of the critics is Samson Mow, the CEO of Jan3, who believes that Ordinals occupy block space that could be better utilized for Bitcoin transactions.
Acknowledging these criticisms, Wall explained that Bitcoin could serve as a “proof system” for zero-knowledge proofs, which would not congest the network. He expressed his perspective that Bitcoin enthusiasts have always been interested in DeFi-related activities, but would prefer the Bitcoin base layer to act as a judge or arbiter of these computations rather than executing them directly on the blockchain.
The conversation sparked new controversy within the Bitcoin community, as Wertheimer strongly criticized Samson Mow and Adam Beck, the CEO of Blockstream, for their dismissive attitude towards the discussion involving Buterin.
