Veteran Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr is at the forefront of one of the most hotly debated debates in cryptocurrency – what the original blockchain network should be used for.
The emergence of the Ordinals protocol in 2023, which allowed some form of NFTs to be minted on Bitcoin, and Runes a year later, which did something similar for fungible tokens, drew calls from a number of voices—few as prominent as Dashjr’s—that they were bringing unnecessary spam to the Bitcoin network and distracting it from its core.
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Dashjr’s resume includes helping repair Bitcoin’s accidental hard fork in 2013 and maintaining the alternative Bitcoin Knots, earning him the status of a venerable developer and commentator who warns against allowing a proliferation of non-financial transactions on Bitcoin.
This forms part of the controversy surrounding the proposed changes to blockchain’s OP_RETURN, removing the 80-byte cap on data that can be linked to transactions via “inscriptions.” Dashjr called this “absolute insanity” and warned that a solution to data restrictions would clog the network with what he calls “spam” and divert Bitcoin from its core purpose as decentralized digital money.
However, Dashjr’s critics argue that his vision of Bitcoin requires compromising its principle of immutability. Ocean, the Jack Dorsey-backed mining pool that Dashjr is a founder of, has refused to process some enrollment transactions.
Such debates will continue into 2026 and beyond, and it is likely that Luke Dashjr will remain one of the most prominent voices in them.
