bitcoin-dev

Ordinal Inscription Size Limits

Ordinal Inscription Size Limits

Original Postby Melvin Carvalho

Posted on: February 3, 2023 19:56 UTC

Robert Dickinson, a member of the Bitcoin development community, has raised concerns about storing unlimited amounts of NFT content as witness data on the blockchain.

While he considers the ordinal scheme to be elegant and genius, he questions whether allowing for unlimited storage is wise given the potential future disk usage of unpruned nodes. He suggests imposing a size limit similar to OP_RETURN for such inscriptions. Dickinson proposes linking a sat (the smallest unit of bitcoin) to a deed or other legal construct for proof of ownership in the real world, allowing for the transfer of real property on the blockchain using ordinals. However, he believes storing the property itself on the blockchain seems nonsensical.A low-tech solution proposed by another member of the community involves miners charging a premium for storing images in the blockchain. This would encourage bitcoin to be used as a financial network while increasing the security budget.