These days, there has been a lot of discussion on the internet about the proposal to lift the OP_RETURN restriction - this is a proposal put forward by Bitcoin Core OG developer Peter Todd.

(It is worth mentioning that HBO once pointed out Peter Todd as Satoshi Nakamoto in the heavily promoted documentary 'The Currency Electric: The Mystery of Bitcoin', which led to Peter Todd receiving a large number of funding requests and threats, and he is currently in hiding.)

While there are many doubts in the community about this OP_RETURN modification, according to Bitcoin developer and Blockstream core contributor Greg Sanders (nickname 'instagibbs') on May 5th,Announcement released on GitHubIn the next network upgrade, Bitcoin Core will no longer impose any byte or quantity restrictions on OP_RETURN.

What is OP_RETURN?

We all know that Bitcoin is a ledger that can never be tampered with, and each transaction is like writing a line of record on it.

And OP_RETURN is like sticking a 'note' on the edge of a page - you can write dozens of words or small pieces of data into it, and this note is marked by the system as 'read-only', others cannot use it as money, nor will it affect the records of other 'money' in the ledger.

The reason for having such a 'note' feature is that sometimes people want to permanently pin some additional information (such as legal proofs, short messages, anniversaries, or even confessions) on the chain, but do not want to occupy the space used to store 'tradable' bitcoins in the UTXO. With the help of OP_RETURN, this information is thrown into a drawer like waste paper - nodes only leave traces without occupying storage, and the 'available money' on the chain remains clean and neat.

In the past, to prevent someone from writing long "notes" that would clog the network, Bitcoin Core by default only allows one OP_RETURN per transaction, with a maximum of 80 bytes of content. If it exceeds this limit, nodes will directly reject relaying and will not help with packaging.

Now, the 80-byte, single-entry limit is gone - write as long as you want, as many notes as you want, the nodes will automatically relay, and the miners will be happy to pack.

But in fact, people have been bypassing 80 bytes all along.

When there was a restriction on OP_RETURN before, there were also methods to bypass the 80-byte limit. No matter how strict the filtering and relay strategies are, they cannot stop those who truly want to write data on Bitcoin. Because only miners and fees determine which transactions are included in the blockchain, giving miners higher rewards naturally inclines them to package more transactions, and the gameplay will not change due to node strategies.

For example, as everyone knows, the Taproot Wizz wizard NFT, a picture close to 4M, filled a block, and the Ordinals inscriptions and runes from that year were all bypassing restrictions using various 'detours and workarounds,' some even written into spendable outputs, which instead consume more resources.

Does this better align with the spirit of Bitcoin?

According to Bitcoin developer Greg Sanders Announcement releasedWith the consensus of various developers, we can know that firstly, Bitcoin Core has its own "standardness policy" during the transaction propagation (relay) stage, which has three levels of checks before the transaction reaches the miners: first, to prevent "denial of service" attacks, rejecting transactions that consume far more computing power, memory, or bandwidth than the transaction fees; second, guiding wallet authors through the policy to construct transactions that save on fees and do not create redundant UTXOs; third, maintaining upgrade security—treating unknown opcodes or versionbits as "non-standard" until the soft fork is formally activated.

OP_RETURN and its 80-byte limit are the product of this concept: giving users an output that can be proven to be "unspendable", which can store a small commitment or hash, and also allows nodes to not include it in the UTXO, thus avoiding 'worthless' garbage outputs on the chain.

But now, this soft limit has become a mere formality. On the one hand, private mining pools and some centralized services do not comply with this rule at all. Anyone who wants to write a large amount of data can bypass the strategy—either by paying miners directly or by using bare-multisig, fake public keys, or even spendable scripts to hide the information—and still push the content onto the chain. On the other hand, adding a bunch of blacklists at the drop of a hat will only turn into a game of 'cats catching mice,' which not only fails to stop the most basic data writing but also increases the risk of inadvertently affecting user funds.

Developers in favor believe that after the complete removal of the 80-byte limit, both nodes and wallets can enjoy two practical benefits: first, the UTXO set is cleaner, with data all packed into a clear "unspendable" OP_RETURN output, rather than being entangled in various fancy scripts or multiple transactions; second, nodes are more consistent in propagating which transactions are "claimed to be," and the content actually packed by miners, making wallet fee estimation and compact block relay more reliable.

Bitcoin developers compared three solutions, and the 'cancel' solution currently has the largest following in the community. More importantly, they believe that the removal of the OP_RETURN limit is the best interpretation of Bitcoin's 'transparent and simple' spirit: when a strategy has lost its effectiveness but is still retained, it only adds complexity and friction; removing it makes node software lighter and purer, and eliminates the need to detour for the propagation and packaging of each transaction—miners only need to prioritize based on the fee level, and the fee market naturally adjusts the competition for various needs.

And once there is a real threat of excessive overwriting and resource consumption on the chain, the Bitcoin ecosystem has a proven set of 'targeted' protections: signature operation restrictions, limits on transaction numbers before and after generations, dust rules... These precise means of targeting specific abuse scenarios are much more flexible than the '80-byte' one-size-fits-all approach, and can better protect every node and user without harming normal usage.

Will BTC become a counterfeit coin?

One of the most well-known opponents should be none other than Luke Dashjr.

As a Bitcoin OG, Luke Dashjr, who once said 'The Ordinals protocol is an attack on Bitcoin' and 'Inscriptions are garbage, they are bugs that can be fixed,' has always been a outspoken critic of the Ordinals protocol.

This time, he still firmly stood on the 'conservative' side, believing that lifting the OP_RETURN restriction was a very crazy thing, an attack on Bitcoin. He and others believe that lifting the limit will lead to spam and higher transaction fees.

It can be seen that the current focus of debate and disagreement is whether the removal of the 80-byte OP_RETURN limit will increase transparency and simplify the use of Bitcoin data, or whether it will open the door to abuse, spam, and Bitcoin deviating from financial focus.

Ocean mining pool vice president Jason is one of the most vocal critics, losing sleep over it and even saying, 'This change will turn Bitcoin into a worthless altcoin.'

Botanix Labs founder Willem Schroe said he believes developers should treat Bitcoin as a currency system, not a data storage platform. Another Bitcoin core developer, Mechanic, shares a similar view: Bitcoin should not be used for arbitrary file storage, and every possible measure should be taken to ensure this.

Some influential KOLs in the industry, such as Samson Mow, are encouraging node operators not to upgrade their Bitcoin Core version or switch to Knots.

As of the time of writing, according toData from Clark MoodLet's see, the usage rate of Bitcoin Knots nodes has surpassed the latest version of Bitcoin Core nodes.

This is another challenge to the Bitcoin consensus, just like many times before. Of course, this also makes us realize that although Bitcoin is more conservative than most networks, it is not immutable. After the next upgrade, we may also get a more concise and elegant protocol gameplay than Ordinals, Atomicals, and Runes.

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