Yesterday, a bug occurred in the Ordinals protocol that prevented the validation of nearly 1,200 inscriptions, which in turn did not allow network users to add their Ordinals to the blockchain.
The Ordinals protocol allows an individual satoshi, the smallest Bitcoin denomination, to be used to transfer additional data. While the process known as an inscription of data into a satoshi empowers Bitcoin NFTs, something went wrong and the protocol was only able to count inscriptions that were in the first input of a transaction resulting in missing Ordinals before inscription number 420,285.
Now the Ordinals community has to decide how to fix the problem caused by the bug, especially how to deal with the inscription numbers.
Twitter user Leonidas.og reported in a post that a popular opinion is to upgrade the protocol to "count inscriptions made in every input of the transaction so that we can do cool things with PSBTs or inscribe multiple inscriptions in a single transaction." However, the exact procedure for the affected inscriptions is still under discussion.
Read also: Casey Rodarmor on controversy surrounding The Ordinals
Leonidas.og has mentioned two possible ways. According to Leonidas.og, the first "feels like the 'purist' solution because it means the ordinals protocol would correctly match the logical ordering on-chain." This method involves retroactively changing the inscription numbers by "moving around the numbers of every inscription created between 420,285 and when this upgrade is implemented."
The second option will upgrade the Ordinals protocol including the indexing rules. This will allow the correct number to be assigned to future inscriptions that were not included in the initial transaction.
"This would not change any existing inscription numbers, so the ~1,200 orphans would not be assigned inscription numbers officially in the protocol. It would be up to the market to value them as "misprints" or not," Leonidas.og explained in the tweet, adding that such a decision has great significance for the network as "it sets a precedent for whether we think of the protocol indexer or the blockchain as being the official state for inscription numbers."
Read also: Magic Eden becomes the new Ordinals market leader
At press time, 66.3% of Twitter users voted in favor of the second option, which was nearly double the number of users who preferred a retroactive indexing change.
