Saw too many people spreading some kind of concern or bad info of bitcoin being under attack. Well, not quite. To get that point, we should consider some things to qualify something as an attack:
  1. Dishonest behavior: When considering, you should have the intention of harm the network, users or both.
  2. Perjury: If you do something, the attacker must take actions in order to harm something on purpose.
  3. Impacts: The one doing things should look to have a significative impact on bitcoin or make negative changes in the protocol.
  4. Exploit: The attacker should consider to exploit or take advantage of some weak point in the protocol.
  5. Integrity: The attack must compromise the blockchain integrity, leaving the security under ashes.
So, having these points into the table, the question: are we under attack? IMO, no. I get the anti-ethos case that lots of people did it but what we're seeing here is Tx fees up and filling up blocks with data that some people are considering not worth it. I see people operating their nodes with no issue and the protocol being used as usual. So, to me, from a technical perspective, this doesn't qualify as attack.
Now, the ethos part. I think you have only one way currently to prove your disagreement: use OrdiRespector in your node to show your disagreement because I can't see other way around. This was already explained by Poelstra:
There's a reasonable argument that this sort of data is toxic to the network, since even though "the market is willing to bear" the price of scares blockspace, if people were storing NFTs and other crap on the chain, then the Bitcoin fee market would become entangled with random pump&dump markets, undermining legitimate use cases and potentially preventing new technology like LN from gaining a strong foothold. But from a technical point of view, I don't see any principled way to stop this.
The emphasis is mine. More important than everything and you should always remember: Bitcoin is for enemies also. If you can't see it, then...cry.
What am I gonna do? Keep stacking sats, my plan won't stop for anything. And what about brc20 and stuff? A cool fashion but won't last because it doesn't provide value and it's costing them a lot of money. As I posted previously, most ordinal fans are BSV-lovers who ran from their crap and came to pay fees on BTC. Why bitcoin and not BSV? Because, bitcoin will last and it's also scarce, meaning, it's best choice they can make, that's why they didn't choose other craps.
But IMO, They'll die in their own shitcoinery.
Go full bitcoin always.
Different people have different views on what code should Bitcoin run.
I'm Alice. Bob wants to implement a version of Bitcoin with change X, which I happen to not like. I don't like it because I consider it undermines Bitcoin's long-term mission of becoming an electronic peer to peer cash system. I can label Bob an attacker. Bob clearly doesn't see himself as an attacker.
I, Alice, will run my node with whatever code I decide to. Bob will do the same. We both might talk with Charlie, who is unsure about which version he prefers, to lure him into our vision.
Depending on the differences between the code I run and the code Bob runs, we might fork.
My point is: you state that BRC20 is not an attack. That is your opinion. Other people will have theirs. Whether a certain implementation is an attack or not is completely subjective. And more important than our opinions, are our actions. All the talking in the world doesn't change a thing in Bitcoin. What matters is who runs what code.
I don't want Bitcoin to be used to trade NFTs. Hence, I will run patches that drive my node away from that, like ordisrespector and ordislow if it gets implemented. If you like monkeys, I assume you will run a node that supports that behavior.

And a question, just for me to better understand your reasoning. Would you consider the push for big blocks during the blocksize wars an attack on Bitcoin, or not?
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Would you consider the push for big blocks during the blocksize wars an attack on Bitcoin, or not?
I don't see any comparison between this post and the question but this is my answer: That was outrageous, that was a direct attack of the protocol. Mining mafia was trying to control the protocol via agreements between themselves, leaving other actors outside on purpose. Jonathan in his Blocksize wars explained with more details but to answer you main concern: do I conider an attack? Yes, because they filled the criteria number 5:
Integrity The attack must compromise the blockchain integrity, leaving the security under ashes
The 2017's NYA would compromise the protocol as it was explained here. I don't see the same behavior in the ordinal side but maybe I'm missing something.
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Well, I was asking that because, as I understand your criteria, the big block stance wouldn't be an attack on Bitcoin. You mention you consider it because of criteria #5. To be honest, I don't think I fully grasp what you mean by "compromising the blockchain integrity" nor how did the big blockers threaten that.
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I don't think I fully grasp what you mean by "compromising the blockchain integrity" nor how did the big blockers threaten that.
big blocks -> blockchain grows faster -> more space required sooner -> higher costs to running a node -> less nodes -> more centralization -> less censorship resistant -> more potential for forks -> more potential for compromise of blockchain integrity
Ordinals or BRC20 do none of that. On the contrary: they contribute to the security budget
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I would put it more simply: it's not an attack for 2 basic reasons:
  1. Ordinals simply exploit a possibility included in the Bitcoin protocol (taproot). We could debate if it was a "vulnerability" or if Ordinals is a kind of "hack", but still, if it's technically doable, people are "allowed" to do it.
  2. Ordinals people are giving some free extra money to miners. How could we consider an "attack" on Bitcoin something actually contributing to finance and make more profitable one of the pillars of the Bitcoin ecosystem?
The argument on Ordinals being made mostly by BSV people is very weak (and wrong IMHO). People jumping into Ordinals are mostly degens trying to get rich quickly. They are just trying to replicate the success of Ethereum (hence BRC-20 to -falsely- mimic ERC-20, and Apes/Punks florishing now on Bitcoin).
Pretty sure the majority of people in Ordinals don't even know what BSV is (and some were not even on Bitcoin before this).
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Ordinals are a sats numbering system that are unrelated to taproot.
Inscriptions of up to 10,000 bytes have been possible since SegWit.
BRC-20 has been possible in roughly the same form since the P2SH days (2012).
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Playing devils advocate here to say that point 2 could actually be an incentive trap. What does it mean for those running a full node if essentially 75% of data downloaded isn't relevant to bitcoin? That bandwidth and storage space represents an increased cost to the entire network and it seems like only miners benefit.
I don't care either way. Just had to put that out there.
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Tick, tock, next block.
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i got told i was psyoped on twitter cause i said even though i disagree with ordinals and their usecase, but can appreciate that one of the main reasons i bitcoin, is reinforced with shit like this.
that no one can control it. no one person decides.
if its within the ruleset its fair game.
ill be the guy to say it.
MAYBE WE SHOULD BE MORE THOUROUGH AND THOUGHTFUL ON HOW FUTURE UPDATES TO BITCOIN CAN LEAD TO THINGS LIKE THIS.
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Determining whether it is an 'attack' poses a challenging assessment. However, what is not difficult to assess is that it involves a mix of use cases. It is very difficult to optimize for multiple use cases simultaneously. The desired use case for many in BTC is secure, uncensorable, and well-distributed wealth storage. Ordinals work against this goal by attempting to use BTC for a different purpose: data storage. One can endlessly argue about what BTC should be, but it's not hard to argue that these use cases are conflicting.
For instance, wealth storage using small UTXOs becomes impractical as individuals attempting to use BTC for data storage drive fee increases that surpass the value of the UTXOs storing wealth. Moreover, this ordinals augments the blockchain size, raising node costs and reducing the number of people able to run nodes, thus diminishing the distributed nature of BTC.
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By point number 4, ordinals are utilizing an unintended use case that the developers attempted to close, but failed.
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Agreed. Bitcoin works according to protocol. That's all.
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I agree, I'd not call this an attack.
The first NFTs were Bitcoin-adjacent, and they were Pepes. That was even before cryptopunks.
There are many tokens-on-Bitcoin projects: Omni, RGB, Taro are the major ones besides BRC-20. One is pumping, so what. If this one didn't pump, some other would.
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Before NFTs were called NFTs, Bitcoin already tested that with colored coins
It was a failure because companies quickly realized that it is much better to use a centralized approach for these things.
You basically need the blockchain for a small amount of things, like money for example.
History keeps repeating itself.
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Ya, you don't know that.
Hope for the best.
Prepare for the worst.
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