New Bitcoin Block Explorer Feature Has Maxis Complaining Again

Bitcoin’s high priests were aghast over the weekend after the popular block explorer tool mempool.space added a new feature.

Mempool.space now allows users to easily identify if a transaction contained a Runestone or a Runes token protocol operation. Runes are considered the memecoins of Bitcoin and have been dominating the network’s transaction throughput.

The new feature, while celebrated by Ordinals and Runes users (along with believers in open-source projects), triggered the ire of Bitcoin maximalists.

“These clowns have managed to bribe one of the longest-standing and highest-quality open-source projects in the space into labeling transactions that "contain ordinals, inscriptions, and runes" as such. It is a shame, to say the least,” wrote Knut Svanholm, the author of Bitcoin: Everything divided by 21 million. “None of these scams are Bitcoin,” he added.

Svanholm isn’t alone in his reticence to acknowledge the reality of permissionless technology. Bitcoin core developer Luke Dash Jr., CEO of Ocean Mining, a miner that has been censoring transactions that don’t align with its worldview, wrote, “Ordinals, Inscriptions, and Runestones ARE NOT BITCOIN and DO NOT EXIST on Bitcoin's blockchain.”

The Power of Permissionless Tech

The aforementioned “laser-eyes” that decry Bitcoin’s use for anything other than money have been floating around since early last year.

San Francisco-based developer Casey Rodarmor published the Ordinals protocol in early 2023. Similar to NFTs, they allow for arbitrary data to be inscribed onto the Bitcoin blockchain, concatenating data to an individual satoshi (the smallest denomination of a Bitcoin). Since its creation, Ordinals and the subsequent ecosystem it spawned have brought a renaissance of art, development, and users to a blockchain formerly resembling a cemetery.

And though Bitcoin purists decry a feature that allows users of a blockchain explorer to explore more of the blockchain, mempool.space had an influx of support – both financial and otherwise.

“There is an on-chain economy on Bitcoin that takes up 75% of all transactions and that for the first time has gotten people to actually use BTC as a currency, and you expect mempool a company whose sole purpose is to allow people to explore on-chain data to ignore this,” wrote LeonidasBTC, the creator of Runestones and self-proclaimer Ordfluencer. “Good luck.”

Just like Leonidas, dozens of believers in permissionless technology came out in droves to celebrate the new feature.

Charlie Spears, co-founder of Blockspace Media, noted, “If you only use Bitcoin as a savings technology, you don't really need to check what's happening on chain very much,” likely alluding to Bitcoin’s high priests.

Meanwhile, Spears pointed out, “The average ordinals user has paid more fees to Bitcoin than many longtime bitcoiners. I would describe many ordinals users as power users of mempool.space,” he wrote. “These ordinals users are also now probably quite wealthier than the average legacy Bitcoin pleb, and they like to support the apps they use.”