I remember the exact moment the data hit my screen. It was a Tuesday morning in Nairobi, and I was reviewing my students' latest assignments on Bitcoin transaction patterns. The Ordinals daily volume chart had plummeted—a 60% drop from its peak three months prior. The numbers were stark, but what struck me wasn't the decline itself; it was the quiet that followed. In the Telegram groups I moderate, the usual buzz of “inscribe your existence” had faded into cautious murmurs about BIP-110. Two of the most influential voices in Bitcoin had just spoken against it. Michael Saylor, the corporate evangelist, and Adam Back, the cryptographic pioneer, had publicly criticized a proposal that many believed could reshape the Ordinals ecosystem. Their words carried weight, but I wondered: were they defending Bitcoin's soul or enforcing their own vision of its future?
Tracing the moral code behind every token.
To understand the debate, we must first understand what BIP-110 proposes. Though the full technical details remain somewhat opaque—the proposal has not yet been submitted to the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal repository—early discussions suggest it aims to modify the inscription rules for Ordinals, potentially limiting the size or frequency of data that can be embedded in satoshis. The stated goal: reduce blockchain bloat and preserve Bitcoin's efficiency as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. The unstated one: a philosophical stand against what Saylor and Back view as a frivolous, speculative distraction from Bitcoin's primary use case as a store of value.
Ordinals, for those unfamiliar, are the Bitcoin equivalent of NFTs—digital artifacts inscribed directly onto the smallest unit of Bitcoin, the satoshi. Since their launch in early 2023, they have generated over $4 billion in cumulative trading volume, spawned a vibrant community of artists and collectors, and ignited a heated debate about the proper use of the world's most secure blockchain. For proponents, Ordinals represent the democratization of digital art and a testament to Bitcoin's programmability. For critics like Saylor and Back, they are an existential threat—a misuse of blockspace that drives up fees and undermines the network's reliability as a settlement layer.
I have spent the past year auditing smart contracts for East African startups, and I have seen how quickly ideological battles can derail genuine innovation. In 2021, I facilitated the launch of the Savanna Voices NFT collection with 10 Kenyan artists, structuring a DAO-governed royalty system that ensured 70% of secondary sales returned directly to the creators. The project raised $150,000 in 48 hours, but within six months, the speculative frenzy had eroded the community. Artists felt exploited; collectors treated the art as gambling chips. I walked away from that experience with a deep skepticism of hype cycles, but also a firm belief that blockchain art, when built on ethical foundations, can preserve cultural heritage.
Building libraries where others build empires.
The core of the current controversy lies not in the technical merits of BIP-110, but in the values it represents. Saylor's MicroStrategy holds over 214,000 BTC, and Back's Blockstream has invested heavily in Layer 2 solutions like the Lightning Network. Their opposition to Ordinals is consistent with a long-held view that Bitcoin should remain pristine—a digital reserve asset free from the clutter of NFT mania. Yet, when I examine the data, I see a different story. The decline in Ordinals activity began three months before Saylor and Back's public statements, driven by natural market cycles and the diminishing novelty of inscription-based projects. The correlation between their criticism and the volume drop is weak, but the narrative power of their words is strong.
I spoke to a student in my DeFi course last week, a young developer from Kibera who had built an Ordinals-based provenance tracker for local artisans. “If they ban inscriptions,” he said, “my project dies. But is that fair? Bitcoin was supposed to be permissionless.” His question cuts to the heart of the matter. When we say “code is law,” we mean that the rules are enforced by mathematics, not by the influence of wealthy individuals. Yet the governance of Bitcoin is far from democratic. BIP-110, if adopted, would be implemented by a small group of core developers and miners, guided by the opinions of a few powerful voices. In my years auditing ERC-20 standards, I watched as similar centralization crept into Ethereum’s governance—proposals favored by Vitalik and a handful of insiders were fast-tracked, while community-driven improvements languished.
This is not a critique of Saylor or Back personally. They are brilliant minds who have contributed immensely to Bitcoin's adoption. But their opposition to Ordinals reveals a deeper tension: who gets to decide what Bitcoin is for? The original whitepaper described a “peer-to-peer electronic cash system.” Today, that description feels almost nostalgic. Bitcoin has become a digital gold, a settlement network, a store of value, and—for some—a canvas for art. The network itself does not discriminate; it processes whatever transactions users send, provided they pay the fee. The problem is that blockspace is finite, and when Ordinals transactions spike, fees rise, pricing out smaller users. That is a real trade-off, one that the Ordinals community often glosses over.
Listening to the silence between the blocks.
But here’s the contrarian angle that the market is missing: the current narrative frames Ordinals as the villain in Bitcoin's story, yet the data suggests the real threat is not inscriptions but the centralization of governance. If BIP-110 passes, it will set a precedent that a vocal minority can shut down a thriving ecosystem through protocol changes, without a formal vote or broad consensus. That destroys the permissionless nature that makes Bitcoin valuable. If it fails, the debate will continue, but the market may have already priced in the worst-case scenario. The volume decline I saw on my screen was not a response to Saylor's tweet; it was the natural cooling after a speculative fever. The fundamental demand for on-chain digital artifacts—from land titles to art provenance—remains strong, especially in emerging economies where blockchain offers solutions to systemic corruption.
In my work building educational platforms in Nairobi, I have learned that the most resilient communities are those that can hold two conflicting truths simultaneously. Ordinals are, in part, a speculative casino. They are also a tool for artists in regions with no formal IP protection to timestamp their work. BIP-110 might reduce network congestion. It might also kill a nascent industry that is giving voice to underrepresented creators. The answer is not to choose sides but to design governance mechanisms that account for these trade-offs transparently. We need on-chain voting, not Twitter polls. We need technical audits, not ideological pronouncements.
Preserving the human story in digital ledgers.
As I close this piece, I think back to that Tuesday morning in Nairobi. The silence between the blocks is not a vacuum—it is a space for reflection. The Ordinals debate is a microcosm of a larger struggle within the crypto ecosystem: the fight between preservationists and innovators, between those who see blockchain as a sacred monument and those who see it as a living city. Both sides have valid points. But if we let a few powerful voices drown out the diverse needs of the global community, we will have failed the very promise of decentralization.
I do not know if BIP-110 will pass. I do know that the next time I teach my students about Bitcoin governance, I will point to this moment as a cautionary tale. Technology is not neutral; it is shaped by the values of its stewards. And the most important value we can uphold is the courage to listen to the silence—and hear the voices that are not being amplified.
