yojoe on Nostr: # On Taproot NFTs (Ordinals) After reading into the #ordinals (Taproot NFTs) debate a ...
# On Taproot NFTs (Ordinals)
After reading into the #ordinals (Taproot NFTs) debate a bit, here’s my brief understanding. Please correct me IIAW.
##### TL;DR: They will fade into insignificance again. PV 🤙
1. Yes, it’s an **unintended use** (by means of the Taproot developers) but it’s not an exploit. The ordinals protocol would have been possible without Taproot already, just not so convenient.
1. The inscription TXs containing NFTs **only have a cost discount over non-SegWit** (financial) transactions. It’s not like NFTs are unfairly cheap compared to ANY financial transactions and will therefore completely change Bitcoin’s primary use because of distorted incentives. Meaning (financial) SegWit TXs and NFT inscriptions compete for block space on the same terms.
1. Yes, inscription TXs containing the NFT raw data (e.g. JPEG) have to be downloaded by all nodes but **they can still be pruned**. **And they cannot exceed the block size limit.** So there’s no difference if your node has to download \~3000 (financial) TXs you personally don’t care about or a single, big, silly NFT TX you personally don’t care about. You have to download the full block and verify it, afterwards you prune the data you don’t want to keep.
## Takeaway
Ultimately, I think #ordinals will share the same fate of all the previous protocols who tried to write raw data instead of hashes (or root hashes) into the Bitcoin timechain: They’ll vanish and be rarely used, because most of their uses are not worth the cost. **Protocols like RGB who implement client-side validation and keep almost everything off-chain** are more efficient, hence cheaper and therefore better suited for things like NFTs, while inheriting the full security guarantees of the Bitcoin PoW chain.
After reading into the #ordinals (Taproot NFTs) debate a bit, here’s my brief understanding. Please correct me IIAW.
##### TL;DR: They will fade into insignificance again. PV 🤙
1. Yes, it’s an **unintended use** (by means of the Taproot developers) but it’s not an exploit. The ordinals protocol would have been possible without Taproot already, just not so convenient.
1. The inscription TXs containing NFTs **only have a cost discount over non-SegWit** (financial) transactions. It’s not like NFTs are unfairly cheap compared to ANY financial transactions and will therefore completely change Bitcoin’s primary use because of distorted incentives. Meaning (financial) SegWit TXs and NFT inscriptions compete for block space on the same terms.
1. Yes, inscription TXs containing the NFT raw data (e.g. JPEG) have to be downloaded by all nodes but **they can still be pruned**. **And they cannot exceed the block size limit.** So there’s no difference if your node has to download \~3000 (financial) TXs you personally don’t care about or a single, big, silly NFT TX you personally don’t care about. You have to download the full block and verify it, afterwards you prune the data you don’t want to keep.
## Takeaway
Ultimately, I think #ordinals will share the same fate of all the previous protocols who tried to write raw data instead of hashes (or root hashes) into the Bitcoin timechain: They’ll vanish and be rarely used, because most of their uses are not worth the cost. **Protocols like RGB who implement client-side validation and keep almost everything off-chain** are more efficient, hence cheaper and therefore better suited for things like NFTs, while inheriting the full security guarantees of the Bitcoin PoW chain.