Post
Topic
Board Development & Technical Discussion
Merits 5 from 3 users
Re: I don't understand the arguments for Bitcoin Core v30
by
gmaxwell
on 15/09/2025, 16:22:13 UTC
⭐ Merited by d5000 (2) ,hugeblack (2) ,vapourminer (1)
As I posted in another related threads, I have however some reservations against the "total liberation" of the OP_RETURN limit in one single step. It is the easiest way to make that move and it seems to have been already decided, but as this discussion was very politized and generated a lot of drama, I am worried of some potential "revenge attack" once Core 30 gets published

Already now and before any discussion started a very significant portion of hashpower had already removed the limit completely.  Which means anyone can just already embed whatever, the only reason they would delay is because they're trying to contribute to a false and malicious attack that their action was somehow enabled by the newer software when the reality is that they can just do it right now. I don't mean via inscriptions (which, of course, also works), but just via op_return.

This is the product of having limits that are actively irrational for miners to impose, they'll go dig them out and when they do so they're are not likely to expend a lot of time balancing concerns.  Policy can be useful but it doesn't stand against economic demand.

Of course, it would be nice to deny dishonest enemies of Bitcoin that misinformation opening.  Unfortunately, since a big reason to make the change is to make relay and mining more consistent again in order to stop screwing up block propagation/etc. they need to actually be made consistent.  Imposing a 250 byte limit while significant miners impose no limit doesn't achieve that end.

Similar, the alternatives to using op_return such as fake pubkeys or inscriptions also have no such limit.  So to the extent that the reason for removing the limit is because it's better for the network to use op_returns than other means, that isn't helped by limiting op_return.


So really it doesn't make logical sense to limit it, it wouldn't even be a narrative win because people would just jump on these logical inconsistencies.  And since the opposition is heavily relying on misinformation and outright lies, they'd probably *still* do the same attack and claim it was a result of the change-- clearly they can convince a lot of people with arguments to emotion that simply disregard the facts.