- The growing number of meme coins is causing a threat to BTC’s functionality. While some developers are mulling over the shutdown of meme coins, others favor continuing it.
Meme coins originated spontaneously, out of sheer humor, and before anyone knew, they took the markets by storm. In a concise duration, it saw a steep rise in its adaption and grew highly popular. But if you believe the tidings going around, these crafty digital assets might be on the verge of extinction.
What’s causing the trouble?
That’s right, the progenitors of this protocol are thinking of pulling the plugs from this project. Many coders and validators of the Bitcoin blockchain created meme coins. You need the BTC blockchain’s gas to produce these coins. In May, the protocol saw a surge in its gas prices driven by the emergence of new coins on the chain.
This took the number of transactions to an all-time high and an 11-fold hike in processing fees. Some popular meme coins, like the frog-themed Pepe, even caused a crash in the framework. Furthermore, it caused panic among the purists of the Bitcoin blockchain and forced them to think about a solution.
Divided factions over the future of Meme Coins
And it seems the purists have already thoughts of fixes and precautionary measures to prevent such a failure from happening in the future. Some of them are suggesting the implementation of a mechanism that could ferret out such transactions. The supposed fix would treat the volume generated by the new coins as spam. It’ll keep them in a segregated section averting the recurrence of disruptions and network congestion in Bitcoin’s payment system.
In an interview with Bloomberg, renowned Bitcoin developer Ali Sherief shared his worries about the network. He said that the worthless tokens could not compromise Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer functioning. He also sent an email to the largest developer group underlining the urgent to address the concern In the mail, he labeled meme tokens as a problem to the utility and integrity of the blockchain.
On the other hand, a faction of developers also supports meme coins. They emphasized that Bitcoin Ordinals has become a springboard for many digital assets. It provides a favorable environment for creating meme coins, NFTs, and other digital collectibles that are gaining traction in different domains.
Casey Rodarmor, the creator of Ordinals, is spearheading this support campaign. According to him, this innovative framework within the BTC ecosystem has paved the way for the BRC20 token standard. The BRC20 has enabled the embedding digital content like texts, images, and videos on the small unit of Bitcoin, Satoshi.
Conclusion
While divided factions continue their debate over the existence of meme tokens, Bitcoin’s framework’s future seems uncertain now. Since it’s a decentralized network, no single person has the right to draw the line here. So it would be interesting to see how the creation and adaption of meme tokens unfold in the coming days.