Ordinals Creator slams Yuga Labs for ‘degenerate’ Bitcoin NFT auction
While many were excited when Yuga Labs announced its first mainstream NFT collection last month, the exact nature of the auction process is proving highly controversial.
Casey Rodarmor – the inventor of Ordinals – called the NFT giant’s sale “degenerate” for putting participants’ Bitcoin holdings at risk.
The problem with Bitcoin auctions
In a Twitter thread on Sunday, Yuga Labs published details on how it will come “Twelve timesauction would work. Twelvefold includes 300 NFTs – 288 of which were listed for auction, with the remaining 12 going to “contributors, donations and philanthropic efforts.”
The company instructed followers to visit Tolvfolden website to participate in the auction and place their bid – which involved sending Bitcoin to a unique Bitcoin address owned by Yuga.
The auction began at 15:00 PT on March 5, and is set to last a full 24 hours. Yet, just hours after it began, the bidding process was scrutinized by some members of the community who were concerned that the auction implied too much trust in Yuga.
Twitter user @veryordinally, for example, so Yuga established a “really bad precedent” for auctions in the nascent Bitcoin NFT space.
“They take care of the bidders’ bitcoin with a promise to send back failed bids,” he explained. “No doubt they will, but this model is a cheater’s dream and credible players need to set a better example.”
A later quote from Rodarmor Ordinally tweeted his response, saying he agreed, while adding a vicious criticism of Yuga:
“Anyone who has worked at Yuga Labs long enough has shown their true colors,” Rodamor said of Monday’s auction. “They lack any combination of backbone, intelligence, character, acumen, talent, empathy or experience.”
Ethereum VS Bitcoin NFTs
As Ordinal’s popularity soared in February, advocates argued that Ordinal’s NFTs had the advantage of being directly enrolled in Bitcoin’s blockchain. Ethereum NFTs, on the other hand, just store files on a server and point to their corresponding directories.
However, Bitcoin has long lacked the smart contract capabilities of Ethereum, which allow various forms of decentralized trading – including escrow services. Without this, it becomes more difficult to operate a trustless escrow service necessary to facilitate Bitcoin auctions.
Some Twitter users argued that Bitcoin auctions should use Partially Signed Bitcoin Transactions (PSBTs) as an alternative. The technology allows multiple parties to sign a transaction before it is sent to the network.
