Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Debate: 64 bytes in OP_RETURN VS taproot OP_FALSE OP_IF OP_PUSH

From: Peter Todd <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2023 12:51:38 +0000

On February 1, 2023 8:36:52 AM GMT, Kostas Karasavvas <[email-masked]> wrote:
>With OP_RETURN you publish some data that are immediately visible in the
>blockchain. I would consider this better (more straightforward) for things
>like time-stamping.

You are incorrect. Time-stamps merely prove that data existed prior to some point in time. There is absolutely no need for anything to be published in the blockchain to create a timestamp. Indeed, efficient timestamps don't actually publish any meaningful data: for efficiency you always combine many timestamps into a single merkle tree; a merkle tree tip digest is meaningless data by itself.

OpenTimestamps does in fact use OpReturn rather than something more efficient. But it does this only because the efficiency gain isn't significant enough for me to have gotten around to improving it. Reducing fee costs by ~10% isn't a good use of my time.

>With Taproot you need to spend the utxo to make the script visible. This
>seems better when you don't want the data public but you need to be able to
>reveal the data when the time comes.

If your concern is the data being public due to OpReturn vs Taproot, you are confused and need to think more carefully about what exactly you are doing.