Vitalik Buterin assesses Bitcoin's recent status: Ordinals welcome back "developer culture" and resist laser eye movements

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin recently praised the Bitcoin ecosystem, which is a rare occurrence. He commended the NFT protocol Ordinals, which Bitcoin maximalists have criticized. He believes that this finally makes Bitcoin developers look like they are doing something.

What is Ordinals: An overview of Ordinals technology, ecosystem, and data

Hoping Bitcoin is More Than Just a Payment Medium

Vitalik recently participated in a Twitter Space hosted by former investment manager Eric Wall of Arcane Research and Bitcoin supporter Udi Wertheimer.

The discussion focused on Bitcoin's future scaling solutions, the new ecosystem brought by Ordinals, and Vitalik's views on the most serious political issues facing Bitcoin.

He stated:

I think if we want Bitcoin to do more than just payments, it will need scaling solutions such as Plasma or ZK Rollups. Ethereum has tried both of these solutions, with Optimism and Arbitrum being two successful examples of Rollups that Bitcoin could learn from. It is also a good thing to be open to solutions based on ZK-snarks.

He has also discussed zk-SNARKs in a podcast:

EP.136 What is zk-SNARKs that Vitalik highly recommends? Featuring Ethereum Foundation's Chih Cheng, Phini

However, discussions on scaling solutions have also raised security concerns.

Ordinals Bring Back "Developer Culture"

Eric Wall pointed out that implementing these scaling solutions in Bitcoin could raise security concerns and mentioned that after the issuance of 21 million BTC, relying solely on transaction fees may make it difficult to maintain network security.

Vitalik, on the other hand, said:

Now we can definitely see a symbol of hope, because with Ordinals, we can start to see a culture of actually doing things, it feels like a return to some kind of native developer culture.

Bitcoiners, Stop with the Laser Eyes

In fact, Vitalik has long been dissatisfied with the increasingly serious political issues surrounding Bitcoin. Last April Fools' Day, he specifically wrote a satirical piece on Bitcoin maximalism. In this Twitter Space, he once again complained about the strange political issues of Bitcoin:

Translation | Analysis of Vitalik's April Fools' "Defending Bitcoin Maximalism" Article, Actually Mocking It

Regarding Bitcoin maximalists who often like to put laser eyes on their profile pictures, Vitalik believes that the arrival of Ordinals really acts as a resistance to the laser eyes movement.

However, Vitalik still concluded with an optimistic view, pointing out that both Bitcoin and Ethereum possess immutability, privacy at the base layer, and both demonstrate how difficult it is to develop under a decentralized consensus model.