Thread by Casey Rodarmor

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  • Feb 6, 2023
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Ordinals haters can either protest at the corner of Seethe St. and Cope Ave., or they can build. 🧵
1. Help onboard new users to Bitcoin and Lightning! Increased use of bitcoin will force inscribers to compete and pay higher fees.
2.a Help make inscriptions as efficient as possible: Compression for text formats, and guiding users towards space-efficient formats.
2.b It might be counter-intuitive, but since JPEGs are now competing for block space with Lightning Network channel opens and closes, contributing to make ord more efficient will have a big impact: github.com/casey/ord

Ord is open source, so anyone can propose a new idea!
3.a Attempts to change Bitcoin to thwart inscriptions will, quite frankly, fail miserably, and will polarize and split the community in ways that will weaken it. There is nothing that you can do that doesn't make bitcoin worse on other dimensions.
3.b See Andrew Poelstra's comment here:

lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-January/021372.html

I respect Andrew deeply, and his open-source contributions to rust-bitcoin have made ord possible. He quickly and, in my opinion, correctly comes to the same conclusion:

github.com/rust-bitcoin/rust-bitcoin
4.a Open-source devs working on Bitcoin projects should consider raising money for continued development by making and selling inscriptions!
4.b For the last 10 years, Bitcoiners have been working tirelessly to improve the network, often without pay or recognition, and all while refraining from engaging in and profiting from the ridiculous shitcoinery that has plagued the world.
4.c There *is* an argument to be made that inscriptions are a form of shitcoinery. But I strongly believe that if you do it right, with original content, no presales, or promises of upside or utility, and full transparency, it the same as painting a picture and selling it.
4.d I would love it if the amazing people that I know in this space would take advantage of the opportunity to profit a little bit, and do what they see fit with that money, including funding their amazing work, so it can remain free and open for all to benefit from.
4.e A very brief and incomplete list of people who are doing amazing work in the space:

(I made sure to tag everyone in individual tweets, so DM me and I'll delete the tweet w/your name if you wish! Twitter DMs are RIP so better via another channel.)
4.f @EricSirion is a hard-core privacy advocate, and one of the most principled people I have ever met. His a real cypherpunk and crypto anarchist, and is building great things at Fedi

twitter.com/fedibtc
4.g @_JustinMoon_ Mullet. Enough said.
4.h @SomsenRuben is a wizard comes up with weird and amazing bitcoin spells for users to cast.
4.i @achow101 is a tireless dev, who has worked hard on descriptor wallets and much more.
4.j @craigraw is the author of Sparrow Wallet, my favorite full-node-powered desktop GUI wallet, and our current recommendation for users to hold ordinals, if they can't get set up with ord. (Don't spend from the wallet you use to hold ordinals!)
4.k @kallewoof is the good-natured Swede (Jag älsker sverige! 🥹🥹🥹🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪) who helps @ajtowns run Signet, one of Bitcoin's test networks, as well as being a maintainer of the BIP repo.
4.l @ajtowns is the other half of Signet, and works on the amazing BITCOIN INQUISITION project, to allow proposed upgrades of Bitcoin to be tested publicly and collaboratively on signet. This is a great step forward in the upgrade process, and can't wait to see how it develops.
4.m @dusty_daemon is cranking out PRs supporting splicing on Lighting, which will let you move main-chain funds in and out of lightning with no downtime.
4.p @D_plus__plus is tirelessly working to educate bitcoiners on how to run nodes. She is in spaces NON STOP spreading Satoshi's good word and helping bitcoiners get going.
4.q @niftynei is a dear friend and a Core Lightning contributor. She's currently doing amazing work in the Bitcoin Education space, and BTC++, the conference she helps run, is the first place bitcoiners got their hands on pre-alpha inscriptions

www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5V33kV3iqo&t=2695s
4.r @LLFOURN brings us new and weird bitcoin and cryptographic constructions, and is as funny as he is wise. (To be clear: *very* funny, and *very* wise.)
4.s @pwuille is a personal hero of mine, and many others, and has tirelessly brought us many of the foundational and fundamental improvements that power the network today.
4.z As I mentioned above, please let me know if you'd like not to be mentioned in this thread, and I'll delete the tweet with your name in it!
5.a To wrap up, you can seethe or you can build. You can build in ways that bring users and uses onto bitcoin, which will force inscribers to pay higher fees. If you believe in markets, they will be priced out.
5.b You can also engage in harm reduction, make ord and inscriptions use block space more efficiently
5.c You can also use this as an opportunity to raise funds for improving bitcoin by making and selling inscriptions. Only do this if you feel comfortable with it.
5.d You can also try to destroy inscriptions. However, the same things that makes users able to freely transact with bitcoin and enable rich scripts are the same things that enable inscriptions.
5.e But even worse, a lot of bitcoiners just like inscriptions, and attempts to destroy inscriptions, I believe, will be polarizing and harmful to the community.
5.f I encourage you to take a deep breath and think about what inscriptions are, and how they could be good for Bitcoin. I believe they already *are* good for Bitcoin, and encourage you to think about why that might be true.
5.z For now, the team of misfits and degenerates that unleashed inscriptions on the world will continue building ourselves, and we encourage you to do the same. ❤️
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calle ⚡ @callebtc · Feb 6, 2023
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Wonderful thread.