Amid the controversy surrounding the Ordinals project and the debate over what types of data should be stored on the Bitcoin blockchain, the network mined its largest block, nearly 4 MB in size, containing just 63 transactions. One of the transactions was a 3.94 MB Ordinal inscription featuring an image of a wizard, and the Bitcoin-issued non-fungible token (NFT) has generated significant discussion.
Small Block Advocates Speak Out Against the 4 MB Bitcoin Block With NFT Inscription
On Feb. 1, 2023, the Luxor mining pool mined the largest block (#774,628) ever recorded on the Bitcoin network, approximately 3.96 MB. The coinbase parameter of the block contains a message indicating its discovery by Luxor. The mining pool also took to Twitter to inform the community about the discovery and the reason for the large size of the block.
“Last night, Luxor harnessed its magic energy and freed an ancient wizard from his cosmic cage where he had been trapped for many epochs,” the mining pool tweeted. “Keen observers of the chain of time may have noticed a 4 MB anomaly, unlike anything seen before. Will there be others?” The tweet also included an image of the “Taproot Wizard,” an Ordinal inscription #652, attached to the block. Taproot, a feature applied to the Bitcoin network on Nov. 12, 2021, was activated at block height 709,632 and brought several new benefits to BTC users.
A 3.96 MB block #774628 has been just added to Bitcoin by @LuxorTechTeam exploiting buggy Taproot! The previous record was just 2.77 MB. Here’s the list of the largest blocks: https://t.co/LsavqjLFEq
This will trigger many! Are we on the verge of a new blocksize war? 🤓
— Nikita Zhavoronkov (@nikzh) February 2, 2023
Essentially, Taproot allows multiple participants in a transaction to create a single combined digital signature, making transactions more efficient and private. Since the creation of Ordinals, it has been discovered that using a Segregated Witness (Segwit) “discount” in combination with Taproot allows for a full block to be 4 MB in size, bypassing the 1 MB limit encoded in the Bitcoin blockchain. It was previously known that Segwit slightly increased block sizes, with the largest block before Luxor’s 3.96 MB being 2.765 MB (#748,918) mined on Aug. 11, 2022.
Concerns Raised Over Immutable Nature of Bitcoin and So-Called ‘Dangerous’ Content
Meanwhile, Ordinals were already controversial among some bitcoin maximalists, and the 4 MB block mined…
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