Ocean, a decentralised Bitcoin pool, clarifies its position on Ordinals

The Ocean pool left Bitcoin miners’ discretion to decide whether to process blocks containing non-financial transactions such as the creation Ordinals.

Luke Dashjr—the younger, head of the structure—is an uncompromising opponent of ‘inscriptions’.

https://t.co/zBMSQYHpez

— OCEAN (@ocean_mining) December 21, 2023

The company, founded by Dash and Jack Dorsey, updated its decentralisation policy. According to the statement, the main change was granting miners autonomy to choose block templates.

“Creating block templates has become so centralised that we can achieve significant progress simply by looking ahead. What Ocean offers, providing miners with a choice among several options, is an unprecedented step in the right direction,” said the head of the platform’s sales department under the pseudonym Bitcoin Mechanic.

As the Bitcoin Core client developer Dashjr previously обрушился с критикой on Ordinals, which, in his view, clutter the network. He believes that the creators of «надписей» use a vulnerability in Bitcoin’s software that the team intends to fully fix by Bitcoin Knots v27.

Ocean proposed miners three possible operating modes, including the use of:

• The pool software that filters out the majority of non-financial transactions;
• Bitcoin Core with built-in protection against Ordinals;
• the unmodified original client.

However, if the first two options do not involve a fee, under the third path users would pay a ‘competitive’ 2% fee.

“Our fees are structured in a way that incentivises miners to make a choice that will benefit the Bitcoin network in the long term,” Ocean emphasised.

As noted, in December the boom around Ordinals led to a sharp rise in Bitcoin fees and miners’ revenues.