Taproot Enabled Bitcoin Spam by Ignoring Social Attack Vectors, Says Dev
Bitcoin Core developer Jimmy Song has criticized the Taproot improve for overlooking the “social assault floor” that allowed spam-like exercise, akin to Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens, to flood the Bitcoin community.
Key Takeaways:
- Jimmy Song argues Taproot launched a social assault floor that enabled spam-like exercise through Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens.
- He claims Taproot didn’t ship on privateness and usefulness guarantees, significantly in multi-signature setups.
- The divide over Bitcoin’s goal deepens, as builders debate whether or not to help or restrict nonfinancial transactions on the community.
In a video posted on X, Song mentioned builders underestimated the unintended penalties of enabling nonfinancial transactions at scale.
“What they ignore is that Taproot had vital trolling worth because the improve that Bitcoiners have been inserting their hopes in,” Song mentioned.
“The enhance within the social assault floor of this improve wasn’t accounted for in any respect.”
Taproot Aimed to Boost Bitcoin Privacy and Efficiency with Schnorr Signatures
Taproot, activated in November 2021, was launched to enhance Bitcoin’s privateness, effectivity, and scripting capabilities by means of Schnorr signatures and Script Path Spend.
However, Song argues the improve didn’t ship on its core guarantees. He pointed to poor person expertise with multi-signature implementations, noting that Taproot made the method much more advanced in comparison with conventional multisig.
“Bad person expertise mainly made it a non-starter,” he added.
Song’s feedback mirror a broader ideological rift within the Bitcoin group. On one aspect are figures like Adam Back, Dennis Porter, and Luke Dashjr, who help Bitcoin’s function strictly as a peer-to-peer digital money system.
On the opposite hand are proponents of Ordinals and Runes, like pseudonymous developer Leonidas, who argue that every one legitimate transactions, monetary or in any other case, ought to be welcomed.
That divide intensified earlier this 12 months when Bitcoin Core builders voted to take away the 80-byte restrict on OP_RETURN, opening the door for bigger non-financial payloads like pictures, movies, and audio.
While some noticed this as progress, others feared a reversal. The uncertainty has led to an exodus to Bitcoin Knots, a competing implementation.
Knots nodes now make up almost 28% of the community, up from simply 67 nodes in March.
Despite his criticism, Song hasn’t utterly written off Taproot. “It can, in fact, redeem itself,” he mentioned, citing future functions like BitVM and Ark as attainable methods to justify the improve’s value.
Meanwhile, Leonidas claims that Ordinals and Runes have contributed over $500 million in transaction charges, bolstering Bitcoin’s long-term safety because the block subsidy diminishes.
Still, Dune Analytics data shows fee revenues are inconsistent, starting from simply $3,000 to $537,000 per day in 2025, a far cry from the almost $10 million peak seen in December 2023.
Dev Threatens Bitcoin Core Fork Over v30 Upgrade and Ordinals Censorship
Leonidas, a number one determine within the Ordinals ecosystem, has warned he will fund a Bitcoin Core fork if builders try and censor Ordinals or Runes transactions within the upcoming v30 improve.
The open letter, backed by miners controlling over 50% of the community’s hash charge, indicators a deepening divide over Bitcoin’s future utility because the community prepares to develop on-chain information capability.
The v30 improve, set for October 2025, will take away the 80-byte OP_RETURN restrict and allow as much as 4MB of knowledge per transaction, fueling the rise of what critics name “JPEG spam.”
Adam Back of Blockstream argues these data-heavy inscriptions are displacing reputable transactions, whereas Leonidas counters that Ordinals have contributed over $500 million in charges since 2023.
As tensions mount, the choice Bitcoin Knots implementation, against v30’s information coverage adjustments, has grown to manage 18% of the community.
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