The more I thought about this, the more I realized how perfect a technology blockchain is.
Hear me out. Imagine a system that does absolutely nothing besides receiving data but at the same time solves a lot of real world problems.
A blockchain is like a large building with so many rooms(blocks) holding data. Of course, the building is actively developing because new rooms keep getting added. Now, in order for anyone to pass data onto a room, they need to pay a fee and have a special set of keys.
What “raw data” they store in the room they got is nobody's business, frankly it's all valuable as the blockchain is just there to “store” not “define value”.
Think about it for a second. This means that fundamentally, blockchain is a store of value just as it is a store of trash but ultimately, it's just a store, what is valuable and what isn't is individually determined.
And if you think hard enough, trash is essentially a new found form of what was previously valuable just as what is valuable was previously seen as trash.
Hence, the blockchain knows no spam because each data passed to the chain “follows the rules”.
Let's expand:
There's rules, and then there are rooms.
Follow the rules, get a room. How you use the room is not a single soul's care in the world because you followed the rules.
The real world has rules, regulations, laws, and is yet a disaster, why? Because each of this system of rules has a backdoor enabling certain groups to evade it.
Blockchain has no backdoor on the fundamental level.
What inspired this post was a cointelegraph.com article on Bitcoin Ordinals.
It's not news that many pro bitcoiners call BRC-20 tokens spam to the Bitcoin network. But is this true? You simply cannot spam a network that was built to receive your junk in the first place.
If I send “I love you” to someone via Facebook, did I spam Facebook?
Of course not. But it would be considered spamming if I sent it to a random person that knows me not.
Blockchain is the Facebook in this context, Facebook receives all this data and stores them without complaining because that's what it was designed for.
Lau told Cointelegraph in a statement that “there is no such thing as spam” in open and permissionless networks like Bitcoin. The executive believes that all transactions are valid as long as the fees are paid and they conform to consensus rules. He added:
“Historically, OKX has been a strong supporter of the Bitcoin ecosystem, being one of the earliest to support upgrades like SegWit, Taproot and Lightning, and Ordinals are no different.”
The executive also argued that Ordinals and inscriptions can open up new use cases for users and provide a new design space for developers. “Inscriptions have the potential to be powerful digital collectibles as they store data and art on-chain and allow for new types of NFTs to be created.”
Well, he isn't wrong. A blockchain does not determine the value of transactions, nor the intent, it's just there to record it.
If people are going to throw these spam arguments, they are essentially trying to bring censorship to the picture and nothing more.
I mean, if we are being completely honest, all bitcoin transactions are SPAMS if Ordinals are to be considered so. Why? They all pay for gas and do nothing more so it's all spam.
I mean, these transactions are not exactly useful after confirmation unless someone decides to build something atop it.
Like a tax software, an analytics platform, an ID system, and the list goes on. Data receives value when a system is built on it, otherwise, it's just data, a bunch of letters, numbers and symbols, nothing more, just like matter, just there occupying space and being useless.