According to a prominent Bitcoin Core developer, fixing a bug in the Bitcoin Core network in the v27 update could stop the creation of new Bitcoin Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens that were causing network congestion by exploiting the vulnerability.

Bitcoin Ordals, introduced in January 2023 by Casey Rodarmore, are satoshis (sat) that have a piece of information, such as text or an image, mapped onto them. This information makes the sat unique and turns it into a de facto NFT.

Luke Dashjr, founder and CTO of the OCEAN mining pool, said that the inscriptions used by Ordinaries and BRC-20 creators to embed data into satoshis “exploit a vulnerability” in the Bitcoin Core network, leading to “blockchain spam.”

Dashjr explained that since 2013, the Bitcoin Core code has allowed users to set limits on the size of additional data in transactions, but the inscriptions circumvent this restriction by disguising their data as program code.

The bug that allows inscriptions to bypass this restriction was recently fixed in the latest update to Bitcoin Knots, a derivative of Bitcoin Core.

When asked if the Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens will cease to exist once the vulnerability is fixed, Dashjr confirmed that they will no longer work. However, the existing tokens will remain.

Dashjr has strongly opposed Ordinals inscriptions since their inception, arguing that they cause significant and irreversible damage to bitcoin and its users. Earlier in May, he proposed banning BRC-20 by extending spam filtering to Bitcoin’s recently introduced Taproot transactions.

Recently, ordinar activity has increased, causing Bitcoin transaction fees to surpass those of Ethereum. According to Bitinfo, the average transaction fee in BTC is currently $19.48. During the hype on ordinaries in May this year, transaction fees peaked at over $31.