Bitcoin Core team has unveiled a solution to expand the blockchain’s use cases

What’s new? The developers of Bitcoin Core, the open-source software to keep the bitcoin blockchain running, intend to raise the limit for the OP_RETURN command, which allows additional data to be attached to transactions. The v30 release, scheduled for October, will increase the limit from 83 to 100 000 bytes.

Material by The Block

What else is known? The new limit will effectively remove the restriction on the amount of data that can be embedded into a transaction using OP_RETURN. The change makes it easier to embed data into the blockchain. It could expand its use cases, allowing for new asset types like Inscriptions based on the BRC-20 standard and Casey Rodarmor’s Ordinals protocol.

Ordinals and Inscriptions: the fundamentals of BRC-20 tokens

We explain the distinctive features and ways of storing tokens and NFTs based on the blockchain of the first cryptocurrency

Read more

The OP_RETURN limit was introduced in 2014 to curb spam and inflate blockchain volume. But critics say it is now ineffective because users can bypass it by avoiding the mempool and sending transactions directly to miners, raising concerns about centralization.

In turn, proponents of the change say it simply aligns Bitcoin Core’s parameters with actual miner behavior, making data injection more accessible by reducing the incentive for miners to transact directly and facilitating more decentralized mempool-based data publishing.

The standard transaction (approximately 400KB) or block (4MB) size limit will not be affected by this change.

The change was developed by Greg Sanders with input from Peter Todd and other members of the Bitcoin Core team. In May, a plan to remove the OP_RETURN restriction sparked fierce debate in the community.

Proponents argued that the restriction was outdated and that removing it would help reduce malicious practices by network participants. Opponents said the proposal lacked consensus and could encourage spam.

The day before, Bitcoin Core developer and Chaincode Labs software engineer Gloria Zhao said the update corrects a mismatch between the cost and standards of different storage methods.

She noted that the current restriction pushed users toward more harmful alternatives or direct interaction with miners, which undermines the decentralization and utility of the mempool.

Tether will deploy its entire hashrate in Bitcoin Core developer’s OCEAN mining pool

The collaboration aims to increase decentralization of the blockchain

Read more

A number of Bitcoin community members, including Casa chief security officer Jameson Lopp, Spiral developer Ben Carman, and Galaxy research head Alex Thorn, said the change would increase the network’s defense against a type of Sybil-type attack, where a victim only connects to nodes under the attacker’s control.

However, Bitcoin Core developer and Ocean Mining pool tech director Luke Dashjr believes that allowing more spam is an abuse of the network.

Last year, Dashjr claimed that the possibility of a bitcoin NFT issue was a result of a blockchain vulnerability. He explained that the Ordinals protocol allows users to circumvent user-set limits on the amount of additional data in transactions by masquerading as program code. Based on his thesis, the US Department of Commerce later recognized bitcoin NFT as a cybersecurity threat.

Dashjr’s proposal to eliminate the possibility of NFT creation in the Bitcoin network did not receive support from other developers.