Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] BIP - limiting OP_RETURN / HF

From: Andrew Poelstra <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2021 15:55:47 +0000

On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 03:34:33PM +0000, Christopher Gilliard via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> This sounds like a good justification to remove the legacy multi-signature
> capabilities as well.
>

Doing so would confiscate coins, and also it is impossible to remove
legacy multisignatures in general without gutting almost all of Script.
 
> >> Thus, given that it is otherwise impossible to stop people from putting
> arbitrary data values into their transactions, then we rather encourage
> people who are going to encode their arbitrary data in transaction to use
> the OP_RETURN outputs in order to avoid UTXO bloat.
> 
> You can't make it completely impossible to do that, but you can make it
> harder and at the same time you can provide a solution for doing what they
> want to do.
>

I don't think you can even make it harder in a meaningful sense. There is
too much flexibility in transaction data.
 
-- 
Andrew Poelstra
Director of Research, Blockstream
Email: apoelstra at wpsoftware.net
Web:   https://www.wpsoftware.net/andrew

The sun is always shining in space
    -Justin Lewis-Webster