Luke Dashjr refuses to assign a BIP number to the Ordinals proposal, sparking community doubts

Since 2011, Luke Dashjr has voluntarily reviewed Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs). In practice, Dashjr is the only person who can assign BIP numbers. Today, Dashjr is under fire for refusing to assign a BIP number to a proposal by another Bitcoin Core contributor, Casey Rodarmor. Dashjr did not even take the proposal seriously enough to assign it a BIP number, as he considered Ordinals to be a spam protocol. This behavior has sparked a backlash against Dashjr's role as a BIP administrator. Critics point out that he is becoming a gatekeeper who can single-handedly block changes to the Bitcoin code. Dashjr has quietly submitted a pull request that would effectively block Ordinals, and it quickly became a hot topic of discussion. Some have accused it of depriving miners of a source of income and tantamount to censorship. Bitcoin Core maintainer Ava Chow ultimately rejected Dashjr's request and did not adopt his code, saying: "It is clear that this pull request is controversial and in its current state, there is no hope of reaching a conclusion that everyone can accept." No one pays Dashjr to maintain the BIP process, assign numbers, or organize the BIP GitHub, and maintaining this repository does seem to have many challenges. Dashjr responded to recent criticism of him, saying that another BIP editor stopped working in January. He emphasized that he worked on BIPs on a voluntary basis without any compensation. In summary, Dashjr's hard stance on Ordinals seems to make it difficult for him to justify his role as 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. (Protos) In January, Luke Dashjr's proposal "datacarriersize: Match more datacarrying #28408" on Github was not passed after discussion by several Bitcoin Core developers, and the proposal has been closed. Bitcoin Core developer achow101 finally concluded: "It is obvious that this proposal is controversial. Under the current circumstances, it is impossible to reach a conclusion that satisfies everyone. I don't think there is any need to continue the discussion."