Bitcoin Core, the maintainers of the Bitcoin main node client, released version 30 of their protocol. According to the release note, this update “Includes new features, various bug fixes and performance improvements, as well as updated translations.”
Bitcoin Core v30 has been an expected but controversial improvement, since it raises, in the opinion of many users and quite a few developers, a “permission” to carry out indefinite spam on the network.
According to the release on October 12, “with the release of this new major version, versions 27.x and earlier will be “end of life” and will no longer receive updates” – About a week and a half from the writing of this note, the maintainers will reveal possible medium and severe software vulnerabilities following a responsible disclosure process.
Bitcoin Core v30 introduces transaction transmission policy changes, in the peer-to-peer (P2P) communication system between nodes, a new command line instruction, an experimental interface for bitcoin mining for Stratum V2, changes in the software installation directory and in old wallets (legacy) of Bitcoin.
The most important changes happen at the level of transaction policies. As CriptoNoticias reported, Bitcoin Core had long planned to increase the taxable data limit on the OP_RETURN field, which raises the amount of data that can be embedded in a transaction to 100,000 bytes.
–datacarriersize [un opcode que pone el límite de almacenamiento] is increased to 100,000 by default, which removes the limit (since the maximum transaction size will be reached first). It can be overridden with –datacarriersize=83 to return to the limit applied in previous versions.
Bitcoin Core team, main node client of the protocol.
CriptoNoticias also reported that Bitcoin Core did not plan to allow the cancellation of said limit through -datacarriersize=83. Nevertheless, protocol maintainers turned back in this decision during the last days of preparation of Bitcoin Core v30.
Weeks and months in advance, Bitcoin Core v30 caused, and continues to do so, concerns among the most “purist” bitcoiners who consider Bitcoin an exclusively monetary network and spam, a threat.
These bitcoiners consider that, thanks to this transaction policy update, the network could be flooded with useless and in some cases, pornographic images (which presumably would bring legal risks to node brokers), diverting Bitcoin from its central purpose as a monetary system.
However, according to BitMex researchersthere would be technical reasons to lift the OP_RETURN limit. This measure would help keep the blocks compact (Compact Blocks), a proposal introduced by developer Matt Corrallo, functioning effectively.
“If you want Compact Blocks to work for you, you need a reasonably good model of what miners will mine, therefore you may need to have a larger OP_Return limit locally,” they conclude from BitMex.