On February 1, 2023, the Bitcoin network mined its largest block ever at block height #774,628, with a size of approximately 3.96 MB. The block was discovered and mined by the Luxor mining pool and contained only 63 transactions. Among them, a single transaction carried a 3.94 MB Ordinal inscription (inscription #652) featuring an image of a wizard, dubbed the “Taproot Wizard” NFT. This event immediately ignited a heated debate within the Bitcoin community, particularly among small-block supporters who view such large blocks as a deviation from Bitcoin's intended purpose.
Small-Block Advocates Push Back Against the 4 MB Block and NFT Inscription
Luxor mining pool announced the discovery on Twitter, humorously stating, “Last night, Luxor harnessed its magic energy and freed an ancient wizard from his cosmic cage where he had been trapped for many epochs.” However, not everyone was amused. Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr, who previously called Ordinals an “attack,” quickly created a node patch to filter or censor Ordinal “spam.” He clarified that the patch was “NOT a protocol change or soft fork/hard fork, just a harmless (if it works right) spam filter.”
On the Reddit forum r/bitcoin, the top-voted comment read: “I would much rather see such a block full of real monetary transactions from thousands of people, instead of this idiocy.” Another user argued that the Taproot scheme enabling 4 MB blocks was dangerous: “We’re one bad actor or one automated miner away from cementing vile and disgusting things to a permanent, globally distributed, uncensorable database.”
Taproot, activated on November 12, 2021, allows multiple participants to create a single combined digital signature, enhancing privacy and efficiency. Since the advent of Ordinals, it was discovered that combining the SegWit “discount” with Taproot could extend the block size beyond the traditional 1 MB limit, reaching up to 4 MB. Prior to this, the largest block was 2.765 MB (block #748,918) mined on August 11, 2022.
Concerns Over Immutability and ‘Dangerous’ Content
Beyond the wizard NFT, an unsavory image was inscribed into inscription #668. Although the image was later removed from the Ordinals website, it remains permanently embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain. Furthermore, the classic game “DOOM” was uploaded to the blockchain, found in inscription #466. Some Bitcoin advocates expressed concern that the network should not be used for non-financial data storage.
Luxor mining pool also faced criticism. One Twitter user replied to Luxor’s announcement: “There’s nothing revolutionary in what you did. You stuffed a nasty JPEG with zero artistic value into the blockchain… you could have crafted the same stupid image 10,000 times smaller. Why did you make it 4 MB? Because it’s mischief; you are trolls.”
The controversy has reignited discussions about Bitcoin’s block capacity and its intended use case. While some view Ordinals as an innovative application of the blockchain, others insist Bitcoin should remain focused on value transfer and avoid becoming a database for arbitrary data. As of now, the network has not experienced congestion or security issues due to this block, but the ideological rift within the community appears to have widened.