Monero, the renowned privacy-focused blockchain, has recently introduced Mordinals (Monero Ordinals), allowing users to attach arbitrary data to transactions on the network. However, this move has sparked controversy within the Monero community, raising concerns about reduced privacy and the potential for storing illegal content on an undeletable database.
Mordinals are essentially a modified implementation of the Bitcoin Ordinals protocol, which enables users to inscribe data alongside Bitcoin transactions. In the case of Monero, Mordinals utilize the “tx_extra” field within each transaction to store data. While this capability has existed since 2014, it lacked support until now.
Critics of Mordinals share similar concerns voiced against Bitcoin Ordinals but with an added emphasis on the impact on Monero’s privacy. Monero’s community values privacy as a paramount aspect, and the introduction of NFTs on a network that strives for unremarkable tokens raises challenges.
Monero transactions prioritize privacy by employing “ring signatures,” which bundle a transaction with a set of dummy ones. Flooding Monero blocks with Mordinals could enable attackers to differentiate genuine transactions from the dummy NFTs, posing a genuine threat to privacy. The potential for such attacks is evident, given the United States Internal Revenue Service’s $625,000 bounty offered in 2020 for tracking Monero transactions.
Decentralization Concerns and Block Size Impact
Another concern surrounding Mordinals is their impact on decentralization. As blocks grow larger, the storage requirements for nodes increase, disincentivizing smaller nodes from remaining online. While the protocol could be updated to allow nodes to prune these transactions, such filtering might be perceived as censorship, which contradicts the principle of consensus among nodes in a blockchain.
Despite these criticisms, it appears that Mordinals may not have an excessive impact on Monero’s blockchain size, as the network features a dynamic block size, unlike Bitcoin. On-chain metrics suggest that blocks are not growing abnormally fast. Moreover, proponents argue that the privacy risks associated with Mordinals can be addressed through updates and improvement
Disclaimer: This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments. This is a news article only.
