BITCOIN SEASON 2: Bitcoin OP_RETURN War Explained
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 10 May 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bitcoin developers are clashing over relaxing OP_RETURN limits. This technical debate about arbitrary data on Bitcoin has sparked divisions about what constitutes "spam" and revealed tensions between Bitcoin Core devs and those seeking a "purer" Bitcoin experience.
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What started as a technical proposal has exploded into community division, with accusations of "destroying Bitcoin" flying around. The hosts break down what OP_RETURN is, why some devs want to increase its size limit, and why others view it as enabling "spam" on the blockchain. At its core, this fight reveals deeper tensions about who controls Bitcoin's future and what the network should be used for.
Notes:
- OP_RETURN limit currently set at 83 bytes
- Proposal would increase limit to ~1 megabyte
- 30-45% of Bitcoin transactions are "non-financial"
- Bitcoin Knots node usage has grown to 7-8%
- Out-of-band transactions bypass node relay
- Core devs facing diminished community trust
Timestamps:
00:00:00:00 Start
00:00:36:16 Why's everyone so mad?
00:02:04:14 Claim your bias
00:04:00:03 The backstory
00:08:27:09 Changing the OP_RETRUN limit
00:11:24:06 Post to relax the limit
00:15:39:23 Out of Band payment
00:17:39:06 Standard vs valid consensus
00:19:52:29 What is spam?
00:28:41:05 Arch Network
00:29:13:14 Cons of increasing the limit
00:32:34:25 That's too "woke" bro!
00:35:56:27 Knots
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Bitcoin developers are fighting again. |
| 0:03.0 | They might never have stopped fighting, but this past two weeks, there is something spicy going on. |
| 0:08.7 | They're fighting about something which is very technical. |
| 0:11.6 | I did an episode on this earlier this week with Udi Wurtmer, and now we're going to reprise it on Riders Room. |
| 0:18.9 | Me and Caud are going to talk about the opereturn Wars. |
| 0:22.7 | Bickland Season 2 is brought to you by Arch Network, the platform building Bridgeless |
| 0:26.5 | Apps on Bitcoin. |
| 0:28.1 | More on Arch later on the show. |
| 0:29.2 | Let's kick it off. |
| 0:36.4 | There's blood in the streets. And like you said, there's more infighting than usual. |
| 0:41.0 | I'm struggling to think of a time when devs were as fired up as they are now about something, right? |
| 0:47.9 | Taproot was pretty agreed upon. |
| 0:51.0 | There weren't very good criticism against it. |
| 0:54.0 | Not that there are necessarily good criticisms against this, but like taproot wasn't |
| 0:58.0 | that controversial. |
| 0:59.3 | Sego was that was not that controversial. |
| 1:01.5 | Covenants haven't been that controversial. |
| 1:03.1 | People just seem to think either they are a waste of time or maybe that there isn't |
| 1:07.7 | enough utility for them yet. |
| 1:10.2 | The last thing I can think of that really sparked this much paciferous debate was |
| 1:14.1 | probably the block size wars, at Circo 2016. |
| 1:17.2 | Yeah, it is weird that the most analogous community fight in fighting, |
... |
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