Bitcoin Core, the reference implementation of the Bitcoin protocol, has been found to contain a vulnerability that is being exploited by “Inscriptions” to spam the blockchain. Inscriptions, which are essentially data embedded into BTC transactions, have been on the rise in recent months, causing concerns among some Bitcoin developers and community members.
The vulnerability in question allows users to bypass the -data-carrier-size limit, which was introduced in BTC Core in 2013 to prevent the blockchain from being filled with excessive data. By obfuscating their data as program code, Inscriptions creators have been able to embed large amounts of data into BTC transactions, effectively spamming the blockchain.
Bitcoin Core Developer’s Concerns over Inscriptions
Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr has been vocal about his concerns regarding Inscriptions, claiming that they are exploiting a vulnerability in the protocol and using it to spam the blockchain. He has also stated that Ordinals, a project that utilizes Inscriptions technology, was an attack on BTC from the beginning.
In response to these concerns, BTC Knots, an alternative BTC implementation, has already released a fix for the vulnerability in its v25.1 release. However, BTC Core, the most widely used implementation of BTC , is still vulnerable in the upcoming v26 release. Dashjr hopes that the vulnerability will be fixed before the v27 release next year.
The debate surrounding Inscriptions and their potential impact on Bitcoin is ongoing. Some argue that Inscriptions are simply a creative use of BTC technology, while others argue that they are harmful to the network and should be discouraged. It remains to be seen how the BTC community will ultimately address this issue.