What the hell are core devs thinking with Core 30?

[alani123]

Ordinals are dead. Regular users are enjoying transactions of 1 Satoshi per virtual Byte, and it seems like some are plotting a revival of the so called bitcoin NFT economy by increasing OP_Return limits.

This is the exploit that opened the floodgates to a ton of trash being uploaded directly to bitcoin's blockchain in the first place. Bitcoin's network suffered under this attack given the very limited space in block size storage the blockchain allows for currently. Transaction fees had gone through the roof and some few transactions exploiting this oversight in taproot technology were blocking the way for everyone else.

Thankfully the hype died down, most of these "NFTs" became worthless as expected, and the whole ordinals situation is nearly dead now.

But it seems as if some core developers have ulterior motives? Why else would they want to push through with making an exploitable bitcoin feature official instead of completely removing it?

Let me remind everyone that there are a few parties that profit greatly from the bitcoin mempool being bloated with expensive spam transactions:

Exchanges: They profit form the hype and speculation generated around shitcoins running under the Ordinals brand. They made billions last run and surely would be gearing up to make even more.

Miners: Miners stand to gain a lot if fees go up, especially given that BTC emissions per block keep going down by design. It's kind of an existential issue for them.

Shitcoin developers: Surely those developing shitcoins at the expense of Bitcoin's blockchain stand to gain a lot at the moment, but also they're probably developing for some serious project that stands to gain in the long term if bitcoin goes down.

Meanwhile regular users suffer and transacting abilities on the bitcoin blockchain are neglected. It would be suicide to remove OP_RETURN limits.

[DeathAngel]

Interested to see the responses because I have been closely following the civil war online of Core vs Knots advocates. I am not a tech expert but I prefer to stick with what I know currently, so I run a Core node. I am happy to see comments from others more tech gifted than me because I know there are many experts on here.

[Ambatman]

Removing OP_return limits seems like a huge mistake
The new update was explicitly discussed on this thread and there was back and forth on why and why not
With both side not being able to really

I am not a tech expert but I prefer to stick with what I know currently, so I run a Core node. I am happy to see comments from others more tech gifted than me because I know there are many experts on here.

You can check out the link above. There was discussion on this.

But it seems as if some core developers have ulterior motives? Why else would they want to push through with making an exploitable bitcoin feature official instead of completely removing it?

the counter of them was that once they make it official people would use OP RETURN which is prunable unlike the alternative that can't.
I still believe that it isn't worth the risk though. We are departing farther from Bitcoin being money and more towards a storage space.

[alani123]

Why is there a mod edit to my post 

[DaveF]

....I still believe that it isn't worth the risk though. We are departing farther from Bitcoin being money and more towards a storage space....

Perhaps, but it's just storage. 2TB drives are under $100 US even with the stupid tarrifs. About the same in the EU. And these are new unused drives from Amazon.
They are cheaper elsewhere.

Not a big concern. Mempool and junk will probably get big and bloated for a bit as people screw around then back to what we have now.

-Dave

[Ambatman]

Why is there a mod edit to my post 

Your post were merged since you post next after a subsequent most.
It's a common practice.

Let me remind everyone that there are a few parties that profit greatly from the bitcoin mempool being bloated with expensive spam transactions:

Exchanges: They profit form the hype and speculation generated around shitcoins running under the Ordinals brand. They made billions last run and surely would be gearing up to make even more.

Miners: Miners stand to gain a lot if fees go up, especially given that BTC emissions per block keep going down by design. It's kind of an existential issue for them.

Shitcoin developers: Surely those developing shitcoins at the expense of Bitcoin's blockchain stand to gain a lot at the moment, but also they're probably developing for some serious project that stands to gain in the long term if bitcoin goes down.

Meanwhile regular users suffer and transacting abilities on the bitcoin blockchain are neglected. It would be suicide to remove OP_RETURN limits.

You posted this immediately after your topic hence it was merged.
It was stated here

Posting multiple posts in a row (excluding bumps and reserved posts by the thread starter) is not allowed.

Perhaps, but it's just storage. 2TB drives are under $100 US even with the stupid tarrifs. About the same in the EU. And these are new unused drives from Amazon.
They are cheaper elsewhere.

Not a big concern. Mempool and junk will probably get big and bloated for a bit as people screw around then back to what we have now.

-Dave

I don't think the cost is the major issue but what such change represent
A subtle change in Bitcoin being money.

[alani123]

The point brought forward against a block size increase is the so called fee market.

In other words, miners want their cake and eat it too.

They don't care if people want to transact on bitcoin. They just want to maximise profit.
Whatever pushes fees higher is a plus for them.

One could say that this is something that couldn't have been predicted when bitcoin was created. Miners have an antithetical interest to the userbase and the need becomes more urgent as emissions keep going down.

The industrialization of mining brought this forward more than ever. Because unless fees return to the levels they were at when the ordinals craze was on, mining will be unsustainable for many miners that don't have access to ridiculously cheap electricity. That's most miners in the US today anyway.

So core Devs taking charge in removing OP_RETURN limits not only serves the purpose of monetising and policing bitcoin transactions, but also at serving the interests of miners.

Soon it will be prohibitive to transact on chain as an everyday user. You'll be able to do so through Jack Dorsey's Cash App, Adam Back's Liquid and other permissioned and centralised solutions. They'll be batching everyone's transactions on-chain and paying the costs collectively. Surely it's centralised and less secure than P2P. But to reach that point you have to put roadblocks for P2P usage first.

Removing OP_RETURN limits is the first step.

[OgNasty]

They will unfairly use their position to push the Lightning Network until someone stops them. If that means making Bitcoin unusable without it to force their agenda, they will. It isn’t about money or even Bitcoin. It is about one man’s quest to cement himself into a legacy he didn’t earn. Which is particularly dangerous.

[Ucy]

A truely decentralized system like Bitcoin is built to serve the interest of everyone within the decentralization boundary otherwise it become limited to special interests who contribute to its centralization since no one else but people like them enjoy one or more of its useful features. Bitcoin is consider a fair system because it's easier to run and could be run by majority of users if they could afford common things like fast internet connection, enough data to access the internet and standard laptop/pc,  Interestingly Bitcoin is the oldest cryptocurrency but remains one of the easiest to run. .

 Everyone won't be able to afford high fee if the network is congested, and running nodes become harder for most users when the size of the data that is regularly validated and added to the chain inreases drastically. It's important to keep the data as light as possible to keep the system fair for most or all users. This is part of the reasons we call Bitcoin a fair system unlike many cryptocurrencies in existence that have restricted full participation with certain features.

One of the main reasons certain people/things would want things like ordinals into system is to bloat and centralized the chain, making it harder to run. That's a kind of attack vector that must be checked always. Data like that are better stored on on things like sidechains

[Satofan44]

It is a policy change, not a consensus change. How stupid is everyone in this thread? Read previous discussions before opening more bullshit threads in your desperate attempt to farm merit and shitpost.

[BitGoba]

Bitcoin is money and a monetary protocol, but programmers and technical people don’t truly understand what money is. They don’t understand economics.They aren’t experts in that field. They just want to play with Bitcoin, add features, and improve it. They find Ethereum and other crypto interesting and would like to bring that to Bitcoin, but they don’t realize that if they turn Bitcoin into Ethereum, it would be the end of Bitcoin. If Bitcoin is not money and a decentralized monetary protocol, it’s the end

I’ll try to explain what Bitcoin really is, considering that there are many technical people here who might not fully understand. On Yap Island in Indonesia, there was a primitive form of money ,rai stones. Rai stones are large, circular stone disks with a hole in the center, traditionally used as money on the island. They could be several meters in diameter and weigh several tons. Ownership was recorded by the community , the community would gather whenever a trade or transaction took place, and everyone would remember and verify the transaction. This is similar to Bitcoin,  with Rai stones it’s the inhabitants of Yap who do it, while with Bitcoin every node in the network remembers and verifies transactions.

Running nodes must be easily accessible to everyone so that all can participate in this monetary network. If only a few people can participate and validate transactions, as is the case with Ethereum and other crypto, it is no longer a good and reliable form of money.And that’s the problem , if only a few people decide and verify transactions

If Bitcoin blocks get overloaded with non-monetary data, it will become increasingly difficult to run a node for ordinary people who want to use Bitcoin as money
Developers should focus on keeping Bitcoin secure and decentralized, and on stopping the inclusion of non-monetary data.  It’s good that the number of Knots nodes has grown to 20%, but we still need at least 10 more implementations. For example, core developers could be bought by shitcoin scammers, but what if Luke Dashjr is captured and co-opted ? There must be many more implementations, and I hope programmers can be found who will be willing to lead them.

[stwenhao]

But it seems as if some core developers have ulterior motives?

Yes. To stop being responsible for the on-chain content at all: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2025/06/06/relay-statement/

Why else would they want to push through with making an exploitable bitcoin feature official instead of completely removing it?

Because "completely removing it" would mean using things like standardness rules, to block these things. And then, miners would start confirming all non-standard transactions, blocking all of the upgradeability, which is possible, as long as most users stick with standard transactions.

They will unfairly use their position to push the Lightning Network until someone stops them.

Yes, the main on-chain network will be expensive to use in the future. Which means, that if you will want to have a single UTXO per user, then it will cost you a lot of satoshis. And it is by design, because if you have small blocks, then you have high fees, to make an incentive to mine next blocks, where halvings will bring down the basic block reward to zero.

In the future, regular people will move coins only on second layers. They may never see their coins on-chain, but only observe, that their data are committed to some UTXO, shared by a lot of other users.

If you want on-chain scaling, then BTC is not going in that direction. Soon, you will be forced to use altcoins, if you believe in on-chain scaling. Or: if you want to see any blockchain, then you will be forced to use sidechains (but it is kind of second layer, so coins are at least pegged into real BTCs; also, after being confirmed on the mainchain, sidechains can be pruned, so they don't have to use constantly growing chain during their Initial Blockchain Download; only mainnet has this problem, because there is no upper layer to commit to).

It is a policy change, not a consensus change. How stupid is everyone in this thread?

Yeah, people think, that allowing spammy transactions means endorsing them. But it is not the case. Instead, it is like a honeypot, because if spammers will use currently known methods to spam, then it can be easily ignored by future versions. Next limits will be lifted, so that developers will no longer be responsible for on-chain content. And also, by lifting these limits, it will block any ideas of increasing the maximum block size, because if someone will try doing it, then that person will be flooded by a lot of non-monetary transactions. Now, there are images, if block size will be increased, then we will have videos.

if they turn Bitcoin into Ethereum, it would be the end of Bitcoin

Why? On top of any spammy network, you can make a subnetwork, which would have much stricter rules. And then, people willing to use blockchain to transact, will still have their well-optimized nodes, while leaving the whole crowd of spammers unaffected. If people want to waste a lot of resources for storing JPEGs, it is their choice. More filtered networks will grow in value, if users will compain about no longer being able to meet minimal requirements to run nodes. And then, they will switch to subnetworks, which allows only monetary transactions, instead of allowing everything.