On February 1, 2023, the Bitcoin network witnessed a historic milestone as mining pool Luxor discovered block #774,628 — the largest block ever recorded at approximately 3.96 MB. The block contained only 63 transactions, one of which was a 3.94 MB Ordinal inscription featuring a wizard image, known as the “Taproot Wizard” (inscription #652). This event immediately ignited intense debate within the Bitcoin community, renewing discussions about block size limits and what constitutes acceptable data on the blockchain.
Taproot and SegWit Enable 4MB Blocks
Bitcoin's original protocol enforces a 1 MB block size limit. However, the Taproot upgrade, activated on November 12, 2021 at block height 709,632, combined with Segregated Witness (SegWit) transaction discount mechanisms, allows full blocks to reach up to 4 MB in practice. Before Luxor's discovery, the largest block was 2.765 MB (block #748,918, mined on August 11, 2022). Luxor exploited this capability to inscribe the wizard image, tweeting: “Last night, Luxor harnessed its magic energy and freed an ancient wizard from his cosmic cage… Will there be others?”
Small-Block Advocates Strike Back
Ordinals have been controversial from the start. Bitcoin core developer Luke Dashjr, who previously called Ordinals an “attack,” quickly released a node patch designed to filter or censor Ordinal “spam.” Dashjr stressed that the patch is not a protocol change or soft/hard fork, but a “harmless (if it works right) spam filter.” He urged the community to write a proper fix for Bitcoin Core.
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 warned: “This is rather dangerous. We’re one bad actor or one automated miner away from cementing vile and disgusting things to a permanent, globally distributed, uncensorable database.” Evidence shows that besides the wizard, someone uploaded the game DOOM to the blockchain (inscription #466) and an unsavory image was inscribed into inscription #668 — despite being removed from the Ordinals website, it remains permanently on the blockchain.
Criticism of Luxor Mining Pool
Some Bitcoin advocates directed their anger at Luxor. One Twitter user replied to Luxor: “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.” Luxor responded by framing the block as a demonstration of its hashing power and hinted that more such blocks may follow.
Implications for Bitcoin's Future
The controversy underscores a deep ideological rift: one camp insists Bitcoin should remain a decentralized payment network with strict block size limits, while the other sees programmability and non-transactional data storage as a natural evolution. As Ordinal inscriptions proliferate alongside rising transaction fees near the upcoming halving, concerns grow over whether these “data pollution” transactions will degrade the user experience for regular transfers. Bitcoin Core has not formally responded to Dashjr’s patch, but many community members believe that node-side filtering alone cannot resolve the issue without consensus.
The block-size war may be reignited. This publication will continue to monitor developments.