bitcoin-dev

Ordinal Inscription Size Limits

Ordinal Inscription Size Limits

Original Postby rot13maxi

Posted on: January 27, 2023 12:58 UTC

A discussion on the Bitcoin-dev forum has raised concerns about the use of witness data in a taproot transaction for storing unlimited amounts of NFT content.

Although the ordinal scheme used for inscriptions is seen as elegant and genius, some are questioning whether allowing unlimited storage is wise, given the potential future disk use of all unpruned nodes. The block size limit still applies to witness data, so anyone running an unpruned bitcoin node should be capacity-planning their disk space assuming that in the future, blocks will be more full. As demand for blockspace increases, people will make better use of the space we already have, and average block weight will trend upwards. It may be better to find a way to impose a size limit similar to OP_RETURN for such inscriptions. While it could be useful to link a sat to a deed or other legal construct for proof of ownership in the real world, storing the property itself on the blockchain seems nonsensical to some.