Bitcoin Ordinals‘ website has been under a sustained distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, causing the site to experience timeouts. The attack was flagged by Casey Rodarmor, the creator of Ordinals, who mentioned that it was the first DDoS attack since the website’s launch in January.
A DDoS attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt normal traffic on a targeted server or network by overwhelming it with a flood of internet traffic. As a result of the attack, the Ordinals website has been unstable and is currently inaccessible at the time of publication.
Critics who accuse Ordinals inscriptions of “spamming” the Bitcoin network find it ironic that the Ordinals website is now facing a form of disruption itself. Luke Dashjr, founder of Bitcoin mining firm OCEAN, highlighted the perceived hypocrisy of labeling it a DDoS attack, stating that everyone involved is likely paying their internet bills. While he did not endorse DDoS attacks, Dashjr pointed out what he saw as a contradiction in the labeling of the incident.
Some critics, like “MeanHash,” cautioned against calling out the potential attacker for spamming services and questioned the idea of censoring valid TCP/IP packets. Another Bitcoiner named “Southern hands” echoed similar sentiments.
This DDoS attack comes shortly after Taproot Wizards’ CTO “Rijndael” released a code script, possibly in jest, that allows node operators to censor Ordinals blocks on Bitcoin. This move was perceived as a response to Ordinals critics, challenging them to “put up or shut up.”
Andrew Poelstra, Director of Research at Bitcoin infrastructure firm Blockstream, argued that Ordinals are not damaging the Bitcoin network. While acknowledging that there is no technical means to eliminate Ordinals from Bitcoin, Poelstra described them as a “passing fad,” suggesting that waiting them out might be the only course of action.
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