Any benefits of my proposal depend on my presumption that using a standard transaction for storing data must be inefficient. Presumably a transaction takes up significantly more on-chain space than the data it carries within its OP_RETURN. Therefore, not requiring a standard transaction for data storage should be more efficient. Facilitating data storage within some specialized, more space-efficient data structure at marginally lower fee per payload-byte should enable reducing the footprint of storing data on-chain.

In case storing data through OP_RETURN embedded within a transaction is optimal in terms of on-chain footprint then my proposal doesn’t seem useful.

On Fri, 25 Feb 2022 at 01:05, ZmnSCPxj <ZmnSCPxj@protonmail.com> wrote:

Good morning Zac,

> Reducing the footprint of storing data on-chain might better be achieved by *supporting* it.
>
> Currently storing data is wasteful because it is embedded inside an OP_RETURN within a transaction structure. As an alternative, by supporting storing of raw data without creating a transaction, waste can be reduced.

If the data is not embedded inside a transaction, how would I be able to pay a miner to include the data on the blockchain?

I need a transaction in order to pay a miner anyway, so why not just embed it into the same transaction I am using to pay the miner?
(i.e. the current design)

Regards,
ZmnSCPxj