Sanctuary Nodes Emerging To Protect Ordinals From Filter Policies
Bitcoin nodes strategically located throughout the U.S. have begun broadcasting to the Bitcoin network a special new status 'ordWelcomeHere' which reportedly signals to Ordinals creators that their transactions are welcome and safe. Runners of the nodes said they hope more node runners will begin broadcasting the status and work to ensure their nodes are highly and publicly available to any Ordinals creator who wishes broadcast, verify, and store transactions with inscriptions.
"No transaction is illegal"
Burt Tungus, a Rust developer in Portland, Oregon is one of the organizers of what he calls the "Sanctuary Node" movement. Tungus told The Bugle that participating sanctuary nodes must commit to denying cooperation with filter policies as well as any consensus changes that are activated by the Bitcoin network which may be interpreted as hostile towards Ordinals. "No transaction is illegal" Tungus said. "We are committed to buying bigger hard drives to store additional data on our nodes, if need be. We have a network of supporters and donors who are committed to financing hardware and memory costs should the blockchain grow" He added.
Critics of these sanctuary nodes claim they increase risk that the network will become out of sync or even fork. They also say blockchain bloat threatens Bitcoin's decentralization. Supporters largely dismiss critics' concerns stating that if Ordinals causes Bitcoin to fail, then Bitcoin deserves to fail. "If we can't accommodate Ordinals, artists, jpeggers, and shitcoiners, then how are we going to separate money from state and save the world from fiat?" One supporter asked. Sanctuary node supporters insist everyone on the network is a peer. "Just because the structure of someones transaction is different than your own, doesn't give you the right to discriminate against them." Tungus concluded.
Sanctuary Nodes organizers are also asking supporters to commit to refraining from using non-inclusive language such as "spam", "shitcoin", "exploit" etc when referencing inscriptions. "These terms are hateful and harmful. Sanctuary nodes and the community that supports them should police their language, when possible, to create an inclusive environment"
