Still confused about what’s going on with Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots and OP_RETURN? I wrote up this overview for Bitcoin Magazine:

Bitcoin Magazine

Bitcoin Core Or Bitcoin Knots: What The OP_RETURN Debate Is Actually About

The OP_RETURN debate splits Bitcoin users: Bitcoin Core 30.0 supports bigger OP_RETURNs, while Bitcoin Knots pushes back, fearing spam, rising fees...

Agreed with Greg Maxwell. Let’s skip years of infighting and smear campaigns, and jump ahead to the predictable climax?

Those that wish to block large OP_RETURNs and whatever else they see as spam deploy a UASF to render it invalid.

Those that consider this a form of censorship and undesirable deploy a URSF (user rejected soft fork) to counter it.

Exchanges can offer fork futures long before the actual split happens, gauging user sentiment and informing miners where to direct their hash power at fork point. Hopefully we’ll see a winner-takes-most dynamic and minimal disruption for non-upgraded nodes, i.e. no large re-orgs.

(Screenshot from this mailing list thread, which is well worth catching up on if you haven’t already: https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev/c/o3JZhiOa2PQ)

Unfortunately, it’s increasingly likely we’ll indeed see more CSAM uploaded to the Bitcoin blockchain. Not because of a change in Bitcoin Core's relay policy. It was always possible. But rather because everyone started talking about how it’s possible.

This looks reasonable to me.

GitHub

docs: Undeprecate datacarrier and datacarriersize configuration options by bitschmidty · Pull Request #33453 · bitcoin/bitcoin

Removes the deprecation for the datacarrier and datacarriersize options by reverting commit 0b4048c from #32406 Many current Bitcoin Core users wan...

Even though I think this drama is largely fueled by social media outrage algorithms, there does appear to be some non-trivial segment of users that wants to keep these configureable options. Just let them have it? (Via @schmidty.)

One thing I always respected about Tim May is how relentlessly unapologetic he was when it came to the darker side of cypherpunk technology. Bitcoin, too, will be used by very bad people to do very bad things. Freedom has its price. (Referenced post:

"Stopping Crime" Necessarily Means Invasiveness

— but there are many like it.)

Pieter Wuille on dropping the OP_RETURN relay limit.

Bitcoin Stack Exchange

Implications of OP_RETURN changes in upcoming Bitcoin Core version 30.0

As you may know, there has been a debate around the upcoming release of Bitcoin Core. I hear the arguments against it and I agree that Bitcoin is m...

This "OP_RETURN war" reeks like manufactured drama, artificially boosted by an X-algorithm optimized for outrage. Makes me wonder to what extent the block size wars were the same thing...