TL;DR
-
The Bitcoin Ordinals protocol allows metadata to be added – or “subscribed” – to a specific Bitcoin transaction.
-
A developer called “Super Testnet,” just initiated a transaction that had no input or output: enrollment number 3492721.
-
Super Testnet has just kind of messed up the order with 1 making all future ‘collectible inscriptions’ questionable.
-
As for each Real damage to the Bitcoin network or crypto on a larger scale – there is none.
Full story
The Bitcoin Ordinals protocol is weird at the best of times.
It allows metadata to be associated – or “inscribed” – with a specific Bitcoin transaction.
Or better yet, users can add code to their Bitcoins.
Since the creation of Ordinals earlier this year, people have put everything on the Bitcoin blockchain – from images to games and even ‘Snapchat style live webcam filters.’
But something really weird just happened on Ordinals protocol.
A developer called “Super Testnet,” just initiated a transaction that had no input or output: enrollment number 3492721.
‘Nothing’ was validated, as if it were ‘something’.
Okay, okay, so what does all this mean?
First, it appears to be a bug in the Ordinals protocol.
Attempting to validate a transaction that literally has no metadata and comes from a Bitcoin address with no SATs (the smallest denomination of BTC) seems like an edge case that the Ordinals developers hadn’t considered.
Second, it resulted in the Ordinals’ inscription numbering system crashing, which was quickly fixed.
There are people who collect things like the ‘100,000th inscription’, either for fun or to sell.
Super Testnet has just released kind of messed up the order with 1 making all future ‘collectible inscriptions’ questionable.
(And by the way, here is how they did).
As for each Real damage to the Bitcoin network or crypto on a larger scale – there is none.
Hackers are going to hack – but luckily you don’t have to worry about this!
