According to a Bitcoin developer, the creators of the Taproot upgrade overlooked the potential for a “social attack surface,” which has allowed non-financial transactions like Ordinals and BRC-20s to inundate the network with spam.
Jimmy Song, a developer from Bitcoin Core, expressed in an X video on Sunday that “the significant trolling value associated with Taproot was ignored,” emphasizing that:
“The increase in this social attack surface due to the upgrade was not considered at all.”
Last year, Song referred to Ordinals as a “fiat scam” and criticized Taproot for failing to meet expectations regarding its promised privacy and security enhancements.
He highlighted features such as Schnorr signatures and Script Paths Spend, which were marketed as more efficient alternatives to multisig setups. These features were supposed to simplify key recovery among friends or family members but ended up complicating matters further by requiring additional signature rounds compared to traditional multisig methods.
“The poor user experience essentially rendered it unusable,” Song remarked. The activation of Taproot took place in November 2021 through efforts led by Jonas Nick, Tim Ruffing, A.J. Townes, along with other developers from Bitcoin Core. This development built upon Gregory Maxwell’s initial concept introduced back in January 2018.
#vlog 27
Was Taproot A Wise Decision? pic.twitter.com/sUjtf8JA2z
— Jimmy Song (송재준) (@jimmysong) September 13, 2025
The remarks made by Song come amid rising tensions within the Bitcoin community regarding which types of transactions should be validated on the network.
A number of prominent figures including Adam Back, Dennis Porter, and Luke Dashjr share Song’s perspective that Bitcoin should concentrate on enhancing its monetary function — serving purely as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system as originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Conversely, others like Leonidas from the Ordinals project have welcomed the advancements brought about by Taproot for creating applications such as Ordinals and Runes. Advocates from this group argue against censoring any transaction within Bitcoin’s ecosystem.
The Clash Between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots Over Ordinals and Runes
This past June saw over thirty developers from Bitcoin Core agree on lifting restrictions on OP_RETURN functionality — allowing significantly larger data storage capacities for images, audio files, videos—and documents directly onto blockchain networks.
This decision has raised concerns about whether Bitcoin Core might reverse course on these updates; consequently prompting many users towards adopting alternative software like Bitcoin Knots instead.
The number of nodes running on this platform surged dramatically—from just 67 nodes back in March 2024—to over 7 thousand today; accounting for nearly twenty-eight percent of total network participation.
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A few weeks ago Leonidas mentioned that his community might even consider branching off into their own fork if there were attempts made by developers at censoring non-financial transactions such as those involving Ordinals or Runes within their networks moving forward.
Songs Remains Hopeful About Future Potential Of The Taproot Upgrade
Evidently dissatisfied thus far with how well applications utilizing tap-root technology have performed so far—Song still holds out hope believing it could ultimately prove beneficial down-the-line if developments like Ark lead toward decentralized mining or BitVM generates increased demand around bitcoin usage overall.
“Taproot can redeem itself; perhaps Ark will decentralize mining effectively while BitVM creates heightened demand surrounding bitcoin use cases overall—but currently speaking—the costs incurred do not seem justified given what users expected.”
Citing Security Benefits From Implementations Of Both Theordinaries And Runes Is Leonidas’ Argumentation Strategy
Meanwhile ,Leonidas contends that both ordinaries & runes collectively contributed upwards $500 million worth transaction fees bolstering security measures associated w/bitcoin -an issue becoming increasingly pressing since block subsidies continue halving every four years .
However reliance upon these fee structures appears tenuous ; daily revenues generated via inscriptions range anywhere between $3k-$537k throughout ’25 according Dune Analytics data reports .
The highest figure ($537k ) pales when compared against record highs seen previously where miners earned close too $10 million during peak days related ordinaries back December sixteenth ,twenty-three .
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