Bitcoin core developer Luke Dashjr has clarified that he did not contribute to the listing of Bitcoin inscriptions as a cybersecurity risk on the United States National Vulnerability Database’s (NVD) Common Vulnerabilities and Exposure (CVE) list. This clarification comes after Dashjr faced scrutiny following his December 6 post on X (formerly Twitter), where he criticized inscriptions used by the Ordinals protocol and BRC-20 creators for embedding data on satoshis, labeling it as an exploitation of a Bitcoin Core vulnerability that leads to “spamming the blockchain.”
Subsequently, when Bitcoin inscriptions were listed on the CVE list of the U.S. vulnerability database on December 9, described as a security flaw facilitating the development of the Ordinals protocol in 2022, some observers speculated Dashjr’s involvement. However, Dashjr, despite being a vocal critic of Bitcoin Ordinals, informed Cointelegraph that he played no part in this addition to the CVE list.
The CVE list allows any developer to report a vulnerability, which is then included if the CVE Assignment Team considers it significant for public awareness. On December 11, the NVD updated the inscription listing, assigning it a base severity score of “5.3 Medium.” According to Atlassian, a medium score indicates a vulnerability that offers “very limited” network access or makes denial of service attacks challenging to execute.
Dashjr pointed out that the 5.3 score on the CVE list was partly due to the vulnerability’s low impact on the availability of the Bitcoin network. However, he expressed concerns that this score might underestimate the long-term consequences of blockchain bloat. He suggested that if the availability impact were classified as ‘High,’ the CVSS base score would be 7.5.
The Bitcoin community remains divided over the nature of Bitcoin inscriptions. While some argue that inscriptions are cluttering the network, proponents like Udi Wertheimer, co-founder of Taproot Wizards, view Ordinals as vital for Bitcoin’s next significant wave of adoption and revenue generation.
The Bitcoin network has experienced increased congestion in recent months, partly due to the popularity of Ordinals’ non-fungible token inscriptions and BRC-20 token minting. Data from mempool.space shows over 275,000 unconfirmed transactions, with average medium-priority transaction costs rising to around $14 from approximately $1.50. If the inscription-related bug is addressed, it could potentially limit future Ordinals inscriptions on the network.
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