Luke Dashjr, the only person to be assigned a BIP number, was criticized for refusing to assign a BIP number to Ordinals

PANews reported on April 7 that according to Protos, Luke Dashjr has personally taken on the responsibility of reviewing Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIP) since 2011. In actual operation, Dashjr is the only person who can assign BIP numbers. Today, Dashjr is facing criticism for refusing to assign a BIP number to a proposal from another Bitcoin Core contributor, Casey Rodarmor. Since Dashjr thought Ordinals was a garbage protocol, he didn't even take the proposal seriously enough to assign it a BIP number. This refusal sparked a backlash against Dashjr’s role as BIP administrator. Critics say he is becoming a gatekeeper who can single-handedly block changes to Bitcoin's code.

Dashjr has quietly submitted a pull request that would effectively block Ordinals, and it quickly became a hot topic of discussion. Critics of pull requests say it would deprive miners of a source of revenue and amount to censorship. Bitcoin Core maintainer Ava Chow ultimately rejected Dashjr's request and did not adopt his code. She said: "It is clear that this pull request is controversial, and in its current state, there is no hope of achieving a consensus for everyone." Conclusion accepted.”

No one pays Dashjr to maintain the BIP process, assign numbers, or organize the BIP GitHub, and maintaining this repository does seem to have its challenges. Dashjr responded to recent criticism of him, stating that another BIP editor stopped working in January. He emphasized that he worked for BIP voluntarily without any compensation. Taken together, Dashjr’s strong stance against Ordinals seems to make it difficult for him to justify being the sole administrator of Bitcoin improvement proposals. His refusal to assign BIP numbers to certain proposals has led many Bitcoin users to question why the review process for Bitcoin network upgrades is not decentralized enough.

According to previous news on January 7, the proposal to restrict inscriptions initiated by Luke Dashjr failed and has been closed.