Bitcoin developers clash: Has BRC-20 tokens’ time run out?

• Some developers of the Bitcoin network argued against Ordinals and BRC-20’s existence.
• While others saw no problem, the market cap of the memecoins did witness a drop. 

A fracas erupted in the Bitcoin [BTC] coders’ camp due to the problem the group has faced since the introduction of Bitcoin Ordinals. And also the BRC-20 standard. Bloomberg, in its 4 June report, mentioned that some coders were on the same page with respect to the matter.

The coders, known to have debates and discussions regarding various aspects of the Bitcoin blockchain, are responsible for keeping the network alive.

However, the deployment of meme tokens via BRC-20, shortly after Pepe’s [PEPE] monumental rise did not sit well with a lot of Bitcoin faithful, particularly on Twitter.

Squabble in king coin’s land

Some argued that it wasn’t a bad idea to go try out an unusual route. Others opined that the experiment was not in line with Bitcoin’s fundamentals. 

According to Bloombger’s report, Bitcoin developer Ali Sherief said in an email to the developer group,

“Worthless tokens threaten the smooth and normal use of the Bitcoin network as a peer-to-peer digital currency.”

He also stood his ground on his earlier position, stating that the Bitcoin layer was not a shelter for meme tokens.

Earlier in the year, Casey Rodarmor announced Ordinals. At that time, he mentioned that the idea was to enable users to inscribe digital content like videos, audio, and texts on satoshis, Bitcoin’s smallest unit. 

Unexpectedly, Rodarmor’s experiments paid off as Inscriptions hit as high as 10 million. This propelled pseudonymous blockchain analyst Domo to develop the BRC-20 token standard on the network.

Can success be fatal?

Domo’s action led to another Ordinals’ success as BRC-20 tokens hit a $1 billion market capitalization. 

However, Casa’s founder Jameson Lopp did not seem to have a lot of problems with the token deployment. Backing up his stance, the crypto storage provider lead noted, 

“Bitcoin network is meant to be an “auction market for the block space” — the place where data is stored — and Ordinals merely stoked demand for it.”

Meanwhile, another Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr supported the opinion of Sherief. He opined that Ordinals transactions are like spam and should be kept off Bitcoin’s blockchain. 

Read Bitcoin’s [BTC] Price Prediction 2023-2024

In line with his belief, Dashjr created a program, Ordisrespector, to enable computer nodes on the network to do his aforementioned bidding. Communication in the developer group, the old guard mentioned, 

“Action should have been taken months agoSpam filtration has been a standard part of Bitcoin Core since day 1.”

At press time, BRC-20.io showed that there were over $24,000 tokens established under the standard. 

Source: BRC-20.io

However, the market capitalization decreased to $475 million. This suggested a decrease in interest and minting of the tokens. On the other hand, BTC exchanged hands at $26,659.