Casey published a blog post (aka an Ordinals proposal) 12 days ago about simplifying the Ordinals protocol by:
This ignited a firestorm of debate and controversy across the Ordinals space.
On one hand, you had the artist/collector who wanted to keep the numbers the same because inscription numbers had become an easily recognized and important rarity element for Ordinals.
On the other hand you had the developer who wanted to reindex the numbers to simplify the protocol and enable faster development moving forward.
This is a broad oversimplification, but highlights the key points on each side.
After a long heated 12 days, the final result is that nothing will change. The proposal will not move forward. Everything will stay the same to how it was before:
Cursed Ordinals will still exist for a long time as the Ordinals protocol matures in identifying new edge cases
Eventually (and occasionally) these cursed inscription categories will be blessed, which means the inscription numbers for any new (previously cursed) category will start receiving positive numbers. The negative numbers of cursed inscriptions before the "blessed" day will remain negative.
The Ord team commits, yet again, to the stability of inscription numbers
With the only caveat that in the event of a bug that requires fixing, it may disrupt inscription numbers.
Casey listens to the community. He wants to hear what we want for the Ordinals protocol.
The Ordinals community is very involved in wanting to help push the protocol in the right direction.
While inscriptions numbers are a result of a meta-protocol (not on chain) we can still love them and continue to use them (but devs, don't use them as a primary key)
The bar is higher today than earlier this year on what changes can make it into the Ordinals protocol. Before, it might be easy to slide something like this in. Now, you have to have broad consensus in order for a change to make sense.
The future is bright for Ordinals.
Bob Bodily, PhD 👋 | #BTC #ETH #ICP
@BobBodily