Subject: Re: [bitcoindev] Re: Relax OP_RETURN standardness restrictions

From: Peter Todd <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 May 2025 20:43:15 +0000

On Fri, May 02, 2025 at 07:51:27PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> I think there's perhaps four conclusions you could reasonably draw about
> the policies above, wrt what's been discussed on this topic:
> 
>  * encouraging data storage people to use commitments (7) didn't really
>    work, and given that could be done via documentation or blog posts

At the moment the OpenTimestamps calendars I run are getting about 2.1
timestamp requests per second according to my logs (I keep two weeks
worth). In the past, people who *genuinely* needed mere timestamping
were inefficiently using OP_Return for it. A bit of education - and an
alternative that actually worked - has almost entirely eliminated that
usage and replaced it with something drastically more efficient.

The problem is, only a subset of use-cases can get away with mere
commitments. Citrea itself is an example: they genuinely need
proof-of-publication. A commitment is not enough. No amount of
"education" is going to convince them otherwise.

Keep in mind that Lightning also uses proof-of-publication: if an HTLC
goes on chain, spending it via the pre-image ensures that the pre-image
is published, ensuring the next party in the route also learns the
pre-image. It's a basic building block of lots of consensus algorithms.

-- 
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org

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