The debate about Bitcoin’s purpose has climbed and derived from a direct war where even new institutional actors will influence the outcome. As Cryptonotics reported, about thirty developers of Bitcoin Core, the Bitcoin nodes main client, issued a statement on the policies of retransmission of software transactions.
In it, they attributed to the users of the network an absolute freedom to implement the protocol use policies that they wanteven if these deviate from the original purpose of Bitcoin: be a decentralized money system.
A thick part of the community has been critical with This statementlaying the bases For a war of similar scale to the Blocksize War, or the war for the size of Bitcoin blocks, which took place between 2015 and 2017.
Bitcoin Core does not want to intervene
Bitcoin Core’s signatories, based on an ethical and unnegotiable defense of decentralization in the network, comment that it is not their work “to block the retransmission of transactions that have a sustained economic demand and become a reliable blocks.” In other words, they believe that if part of the network users decide to use Bitcoin as an arbitrary data storage system (inscriptions, or JPG images, text, video and more), Bitcoin Core It will not impossible the spread of these transactions through a rigid policy of use of nodes.
Bitcoin is a network defined by its users, who have the maximum freedom to choose the software they use (with or without complete validation) and implement the policies they want. Bitcoin Core collaborators cannot impose what they are.
31 Bitcoin Core signers, the most used Bitcoin nodes client.
Core admits that one of the purposes of its software is to discourage bitcoin use cases that use the network block space inefficiently. However, they are believers that discouraging “alien” forms of using the network It is only possible when users and miners maintain a consensus of the use cases of the bitcoin network. “When this is no longer the case and an economically viable use case arises that conflict with the rules of politics, users and miners can collaborate directly to avoid any external attempt to impose restrictions on their activities,” they comment from Bitcoin Core.
Core developers, then, do not want to intervene in the preferences of their users nor exclude transactions for considering them anomalousespecially when users are willing to send and pay them, and miners to process them and include them in the blocks.
Taking that into account, Core developers agree on the following:
It is better that Bitcoin node software tries to have a realistic idea of what will end in the next block, instead of trying to intervene between the creators of transactions that consent and the miners to discourage an activity that is largely harmless at the technical level.
31 Bitcoin Core signers, the most used Bitcoin nodes client.
They insist that they are not approving the use of non -financial data, but accepting that Bitcoin It is a censorship resistant system and can be “used for use cases in which not everyone agrees.”
Where critics with Bitcoin Core differ is that Bitcoin’s non -monetary uses are an activity “largely harmless at the technical level”.
The problem: filters and limit of 80 bytes in op_return transactions
There is a debate within Bitcoin Core that could be resolved by eliminating the limit of 80 bytes in Op_return transactions. Although some users echoed that this limit, without a launch note or prior notice, had been swept during the month of May, an important maintenance of Bitcoin Core He went out to deny the information. However, Bitcoin Core It will allow a relaxation of this limit from version V30which will come out in October, According to the same developer.
From V30, Bitcoin Core will allow OP_RETURN transactions by default with more than 80 bytes and multiple OP_RETURN exits, without imposing the strict limit of 83 bytes that existed so far. However, users can still manually configure –Datacarriersize To limit the size if you wish.
Op_return is a OPCODE (Code of Operations) that allows to embed small amounts of arbitrary data in transactions without spending, that is, without representing transferable funds. As cryptootics reported, op_return transactions They saw a Increase of 443 times In May regarding January/April. In May, a total of 13,000 op_return operations occurred that exceed 83 bytes.
The limit of 80 bytes was a measure to discourage the use of Bitcoin as a non -financial data deposit, prioritizing its function as a payment system. Eliminating this limit would imply that non -monetary transactions could occupy more block space in the network, possibility against which critics of the Core statement rebel. For these, Bitcoin blocks without that limit would favor spam and would potentially cause the exclusion or non -prioritization of monetary transactions.
This increase in op_return transactions and intention, still in the air, to enlarge the block space dedicated to these put the critics on guard, which they consider that this measure is a frank attack on Bitcoin and its monetary nature.
Criticism of Bitcoin Core
The reason that they perceive the activity of Bitcoin Core as an attack on the currency is that they see BTC as the only possibility to escape the “tyranny of money fíat ”, Money whose supply is unlimited and tends to inflation, regardless of whether it is dollar, euro, pound or yen. They consider that, if Bitcoin deviated from their initial monetary purpose, their technical foundations would be weakened and unable to withstand a global adoption of the currency.
Let’s say, for example, that thousands of users decide make transactions in the Bitcoin network, both monetary and non -monetary. What would happen if a policy of retransmission of nodes too free encourages miners to prioritize registration transactions? Wouldn’t the Bitcoin block space occupy, relegating monetary transactionswho would experience very confirmation times? This,Bitcoin would not be inefficient as a payment network?
This hypothetical case relatively illustrates the concern of critics about the Bitcoin Core transaction retransmission policy, very permissive with Op_return transactions.
What do Bitcoin Core critics say textually?
Samson Mow, the well -known CEO of Jan3, He expressed comments Negative about the “relaxation against spam” that is showing the policies of retransmission of Bitcoin Core transactions:
Bitcoin Core developers have gradually modify the network to facilitate spam and now seem to be focused on eliminating barriers for spammers. It is misleading to say simply “it is what it is now, what a pity” (…).
Samson Mow, CEO of Jan3.
Luke Dashjr, the Knots driver, a bitcoin customer that actively includes filters to reduce non -monetary transactions processing in Bitcoin, commented that Passively expect that Minen Spam miners “is defeatism”. Dashjr criticizes, with this, the tendency of Bitcoin Core developers to accommodate the demand for users and miners for registrations. He also redefined some terms contained in Bitcoin Core statement:
[El comunicado] It presents spam as “largely harmless,” when reality is exactly the opposite. It deals with the abuse of the block chain and the nodes as legitimate “cases of use”, instead of the two attacks that really are, and talks about them as if they were something different, thus insinuating that spam is not the same (and it is).
Luke Dashjr, Bitcoin Knots maintenance.
Other critics have pointed out the centralized nature of the Bitcoin Core statement.
Giacomo Zucco, a Maximalist from Bitcoin, He commented on the following In this regard:
How can a website that describes a decentralized and open -source development, with many collaborators over the years discreting on various topics, issuing an official statement on this topic? Who are “we”? Only the signatories of the declaration? Should then assume that the minority of collaborators in disagreement could sign a different statement and that the website would simply publish it? Or should this site be considered as the voice of a formal organization with clear governance and distinguish the amorphous mass of external collaborators of Bitcoin Core, which may have different opinions on the subject, of an organ of governance of Bitcoin Core well defined, with an official voice?
Giacomo Zucco, Maximalist of Bitcoin.
Another user alludes That Bitcoin Core should not publish an official announcement of this class, since it represents the position of only 31 developers when in Bitcoin Core hundreds of people have contributed. Meanwhile, another Bitcoin maximalist He dared to say that Bitcoin now has its Ethereum Foundationand sent a message to companies with treasury in Bitcoin.
Cryptonoticias has followed up to the debate, now turned into an open war, presented in this article. He has periodically updated on the adoption figures of Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots. He even wrote an editorial note on the subject, proposing that this discussion in Bitcoin’s technical nucleus is positive for the decentralization of the network.
Despite this, the debate is climbing quickly, and the level of criticism to Bitcoin Core on social networks is not a recent precedent.
The weather around Bitcoin’s technical nucleus is rarefied. Does this mean that a powerful change in the network protocol is coming? What Bitcoin Core will lose mass adoption (Knots already runs 11% of the nodes), or, more unlikely, than a hard bifurcation (Hard fork) of Bitcoin is just around the corner?
All scenarios are possible; For now, the effects of this debate are limited to differences between customers of Bitcoin nodes, far from the network consensus rules.
