A Love Letter to Inscription Numbers

The creator of the Ordinals Protocol, Casey Rodarmor, just introduced a proposal that would effectively eliminate inscription numbers. This change would retroactively index previously invalid inscriptions, destabilizing all positive inscription numbers.

But this isn't just about altering the numbers on our JPEGs. The broader concern here is setting a precedent that it is okay to rewrite past events, which undermines the very essence of immutability, a fundamental tenet for all successful crypto-economic protocols.

Nearly every meta-protocol built on top of Ordinals (BRC-20, ORC-20, .sats, .bitmap, <100K, any first-is-first collection, etc.) relies on an assumption that the historical ordering of indexed events would not change. Given that Casey stated this was the case multiple times and that immutability is a core tenant of nearly every crypto protocol this was a very logical assumption to make.

For better or worse, Casey designed the Ordinals Protocol to maintain an exact record of the order of inscriptions that are indexed and now after over $500M in volume and $50M in transaction fees he is proposing that we change that record.

While I recognize Casey's dilemma around inscription numbers making the next upgrade more challenging, this would be akin to Vitalik proposing that blocks from six months ago need to be reordered so that the Ethereum development process can be simplified. This is simply something that you do not do. Though Casey may not have anticipated that people would begin to use inscriptions like blocks in a blockchain this was a completely valid way of using the protocol. In fact, it is a testament to the permissionless nature of the Ordinals Protocol. If anybody would understand that, it would be the creator of an NFT protocol on Bitcoin.

Casey is correct that from a technical perspective, it is far cleaner to fluidly choose what should have been indexed retroactively. This would remove complexity from the development process and make consensus around upgrades much easier. Casey brings the perspective of someone who has spent more time thinking about this protocol than anyone alive and he is undoubtedly correct when looking at it through a technical lens. My goal in writing this is to try to convey that there are other perspectives from the people who might not be as technical but who also deeply love this protocol and choose to prioritize the experience of using it over the code that powers it.

Stability and predictability are paramount for investors who are trying to store value. They anticipate protocol upgrades to shape the future without distorting the past. Balancing this with a perfect technical solution might be challenging, however, nine months and half a billion dollars in, we've committed to this course. If continuing the concept of cursed inscriptions is the major hurdle, they can be excluded, and alternative solutions can organically emerge that will leave their value unaffected and possibly improved.

Lastly, I would be remiss to not mention my deep affection for the actual inscription numbers themselves despite believing that this conversation is about something much bigger.

As a collector I value the simplicity of being able to look at a human-readable inscription number and having its historical provenance intuitively communicated to me. Nothing so elegantly captures the moment in time that an inscription was created than its number. I can’t tell yall how many times I have had collectors inform me how cool they think this quirk in the protocol is!

I 🧡 Inscription Numbers

-Leonidas