Subject: Re: [bitcoindev] Removing OP_Return restrictions: Devil's Advocate Position

From: Bob Burnett <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 May 2025 13:38:22 +0000

On the “likely” it is because most high growth, early-stage industries go through this same change.  This is because it is extremely difficult for companies to adapt and change through periods of high growth. It requires constant changes and improvements in personnel, processes, marketing, operations, etc.   It is extremely hard to keep pace.  A few in our industry probably will navigate it and survive to the 10 or 20-year mark but most will vanish.  I’m not wishing ill on organization – just saying that history is not on their side.  In the PC market the leaders changed radically from 1985 to 1995 and then again to 2005.  IBM was number 1 in 1985, and they exited the business by 2005. Compaq was #1 in 1994, and they were gone by 2000.  Another example is cell phones,  2000, the leading cell phone companies were Nokia and Motorola.  Even in 2007 Nokia had about 50% market share, but by 2017 they were essentially dead.

On your other point regarding non-standard, I think you may have misunderstood my point.  For me, the issue in the future in not about services for non-standard transactions but about giving users a mechanism whereby they can get assurances about future access and cost of block space.  For instance, a user of block space (ex. Swan, River, Coinbase) might know that they will have a lot of demand for block space in October because they are going to be doing a major marketing campaign then.  The campaign would result in a lot of UTXO consolidation and self-custody.  The problem for them is that sitting here in May they have no idea how much demand there will be for block space and what the cost of that block space will be.  By getting the right arrangement with a miner (or coalition of miners), they will be able to get guarantees of access to October block space and lock in cost for that space.   (While this exact scenario is just an example, I can say that I am already working on some similar things.)

From: [email-masked] <[email-masked]> on behalf of Sjors Provoost <[email-masked]>
Date: Wednesday, May 21, 2025 at 7:20 AM
To: Bitcoin Development Mailing List <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: [bitcoindev] Removing OP_Return restrictions: Devil's Advocate Position

Op 21 mei 2025, om 04:10 heeft Bob Burnett <[email-masked]> het volgende geschreven:

[..]

That said, I suggest being very careful about projecting the current behavior of major miners as the norm or representative of the future.  We are extremely early in the development of the mining industry and there is a high likelihood that over the next few years that there will a dramatic change in the list of major miners – and there very well may be changes in the philosophies and priorities of these miners as well.

I don't know what your claim of "likely" is based on, but it's certainly possible. However, we have to design the protocol for the worst case behaviour.

Assuming that “major miners” was meant to mean a group that largely is comprised of pubcos, none of the major players in the mining industry have been doing it for long - with most going public very recently (’22 and ’23).

Here's a non-standard OP_RETURN mined by Eligius, not a pubco, in 2013:
https://mempool.space/nl/tx/d29c9c0e8e4d2a9790922af73f0b8d51f0bd4bb19940d9cf910ead8fbe85bc9b

One example is just an anecdote of course, perhaps you could present data that shows older industry players hardly mine non-standard transactions.

Finally, I don’t see any compelling reason for a change in OP_RETURN policy or configurability.  I speak to a lot of other miners as well and I don’t know of one a single one that feels any change is beneficial to them now.

It's not beneficial to large miners. They benefit from centralisation. It's good for them to offer paid services that bypass standardness.

- Sjors

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