The error would be linked to the exploitation of the “witness discount”, used in Segwit and Taproot.
Recent data reveal that more than half of Bitcoin transactions are non -monetary.
On May 25, the Bitcoiner user who calls himself Bitcoin Mechanic, a person close to the Ocean Mining Pool, led by developer Luke Dashjr, said that inscriptions in Bitcoin (BTC), a practice that has generated controversy due to its network impact, became possible due to an error not resolved in Taproot, one of the most significant updates of the protocol.
Taproot and the bug that enabled the inscriptions
Taproot, activated in November 2021, is a Bitcoin update designed to improve privacy, efficiency and scalability of the chain. Its main objective was to allow more complex transactions with lower space consumption In the network, facilitating, for example, the implementation of second -layer solutions such as Lightning Network (LN).
However, according to Bitcoin Mechanic, who also promotes adoption and education on Bitcoin, a failure in that update allowed that inscriptions, a mechanism for storing arbitrary data, such as images or videos, directly in the Bitcoin file, they became a reality.
This error, according to the Bitcoiner educator, not only contradicts the original objectives of Taproot, but has had other consequences: «The inscriptions became possible due to a bug In Taproot, and then we saw each other too manipulable to allow us to fix it, ”said Bitcoin Mechanic.
He bug or failure referred to by the analyst could be related to how Taproot handles the transaction data. One possibility is that the error is in the way in which Taproot processes the data of Witness (Witness), allowing large amounts of non -financial data to be included in transactions Without adequate restrictionsaccording to the Bitcoin Mechanic analysis.
This circumstance would have been exacerbated by the “witness discount”, added in the Segwit update. Since Taproot was built on her, it means that Taproot transactions also benefit from the “witness discount”, which makes this data They occupy less space in the file and decrease the calculation of rates.
The impact of inscriptions on the network
Registrations have granted Bitcoin the functionality for artistic and speculative experiments, but at the cost of their efficiency. According to Bitcoin Mechanic, «88% of Taproot’s outings are Dust » (dust), a term that refers to transaction outputs with a value so low that they are not practices For future transactions.
This “dust”, for the most part, is being generated by inscriptions, which would contradict Taproot’s original purpose, according to Bitcoin Mechanic’s analysis: “Taproot was supposed to mean that you could prevent a lot of unnecessary things from ending in chain.”
The irony, according to him, is that Segwit and Taproot were designed to reduce chain swelling, not to exacerbate it. Instead of achieving more efficient transactions, these updates They would have been exploited For purposes that have nothing to do with money, such as multimedia data storage, something that is not welcome by Bitcoin Mechanic and the most purist bitcoiners.
Segwit, the witness and his relationship with the problem
Segwit (segregated witness), a Bitcoin update implemented in 2017, separated the signature data (the “witness”) from the main transaction data. That separation was aim reduce transactions size and, therefore, increase the capacity of the network.
In addition, Segwit introduced a “witness discount”, where each signature data byte counts as a quarter of a byte in terms of occupied space. Bitcoin Mechanic argues that this discount, instead of encouraging more efficient transactions, It has been used for inscriptions:
“The witness discount that was supposed to be encouraged to reduce the UTXO set is being used by registrations, which has tripled the size of the UTXO in two years.”
Bitcoin Mechanic, member and participant of the Bitcoiner community.
The UTXO set (non -spent transaction outputs) is the record of all transaction outputs not spent in Bitcoin, and its uncontrolled growth can overload the network, hindering its operation and the task of the nodes.
Metaphorically, the UTXO set can be understood as a closet where all the keys of the doors that have not yet been opened. If this closet is filled with unnecessary keys, in this case, inscription data, it becomes more difficult to find the real keys that open the doors, that is, legitimate transactions.
At the time of this article, the size The Bitcoin archive is 661 gigabytes according to Ycharts, a figure that was driven in the past by the use of protocols such as ordinals and runes, which allow to store arbitrary data in this chain (images, videos or text).
If the Bitcoin blocks were full as it happened with the ordinals, today Bitcoin would have a weight of 1,000 GB, evidencing The challenge that represents its growth Continuous for the operation of nodes.
As cryptootics reported, it is also relevant to point out that, considering the last 365 days until May 18, More than half of the transactions in Bitcoin were non -monetarywhich reveals a specific interest on the part of the users for that type of use of the network created by Nakamoto.
This circumstance happens in the middle of a Intense debate in the heart of the Bitcoiner community For changes in the Bitcoin Core client, which caused the resurgence of an old discussion about the essence of Bitcoin.
Thus, although inscriptions have opened new possibilities for Bitcoin, they have also exposed internal tensions that the community must address. The challenge now lies in balancing innovation with the preservation of the fundamental principles of Bitcoin, a task that, according to the developer, is far from being resolved.
