Jimmy Song, a Bitcoin (BTC) developer and advocate, slammed the choice by Bitcoin Core builders to take away the OP_Return restrict for non-monetary knowledge embedded on the Bitcoin blockchain within the upcoming Bitcoin Core 30 improve, calling it “fiat” mentality.
Song accused the Core builders of deflecting consumer considerations about removing the OP_Return limit, which is at present 80 bytes in dimension, and ignoring the significant pushback from the Bitcoin community and node runners. He additionally said:
“The concept spam is troublesome to outline, and due to this ambiguity, we should not be making any distinctions in any respect within the software program, is a time-wasting argument from fiat politics the place you fake not to know the apparent, so the precise debate can by no means get off the bottom — the non-monetary makes use of of Bitcoin are spam.
You’ll be able to argue whether or not that is one thing fascinating or not, however saying you’ll be able to’t outline it’s a stalling tactic meant to keep away from the true argument about precise affect — notably, the long-term affect of this alteration,” Song continued.
The OP_Return debate has raged on for almost six months, and is harking back to the Bitcoin block size wars that occurred between 2015 and 2017, which ultimately resulted in a tough fork of the Bitcoin protocol that spawned Bitcoin Money (BCH), main some within the Bitcoin neighborhood to speculate if the OP_Return wars will end in an identical break up.
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Node runners vote with their toes in historic exodus to Bitcoin Knots
The choice by Bitcoin Core devs to unilaterally blow open the OP_Return knowledge restrict has left the Bitcoin community divided and pushed file numbers of Bitcoin node runners to Bitcoin Knots, an alternate implementation of the Bitcoin node software program.
This surge in nodes running Bitcoin Knots, which now account for about 20% of the community, in contrast to about 1% in 2024, represents a near-vertical leap in simply 9 months.
Knots permits node runners to implement strict knowledge dimension limits, which proponents argue is critical to protect the decentralization of the Bitcoin protocol.
The Bitcoin ledger has generated about 680 gigabytes of information because the inception of the decentralized protocol in 2009, thanks to the easy structure of Bitcoin and strict knowledge limits.
Bitcoin’s low knowledge storage necessities permit anybody to run a node on retail laptop {hardware} for as little as $300, democratizing entry and guaranteeing most decentralization.
For comparability, higher-throughput blockchain networks and sensible contract platforms, which generate much more knowledge, can price tens of 1000’s of {dollars} to run and require specialised industrial {hardware}, that means solely rich buyers and huge companies can run nodes and implement the consensus guidelines of these protocols.
Strong {hardware} necessities translate into elevated centralization of a blockchain protocol and a heightened threat that a number of nodes can collude to alter the consensus guidelines or reverse transactions.
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