From: "'Antoine Poinsot' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List" <bitcoindev@googlegroups.com>
To: Bitcoin Development Mailing List <bitcoindev@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [bitcoindev] Relax OP_RETURN standardness restrictions
Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2025 18:52:34 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <rhfyCHr4RfaEalbfGejVdolYCVWIyf84PT2062DQbs5-eU8BPYty5sGyvI3hKeRZQtVC7rn_ugjUWFnWCymz9e9Chbn7FjWJePllFhZRKYk=@protonmail.com> (raw)
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Hi,
Standardness rules exist for 3 mains reasons: mitigate DoS vectors, provide upgrade hooks, or as a nudge to deter some usages.
Bitcoin Core will by default only relay and mine transactions with at most a single OP_RETURN output, with a scriptPubKey no larger than 83 bytes. This standardness rule falls into the third category: it aims to mildly deter data storage while still allowing a less harmful alternative than using non-provably-unspendable outputs.
Developers are now designing constructions that work around these limitations. An example is Clementine, the recently-announced Citrea bridge, which uses unspendable Taproot outputs to store data in its "WatchtowerChallenge" transaction due to the standardness restrictions on the size of OP_RETURNs[^0]. Meanwhile, we have witnessed in recent years that the nudge is ineffective to deter storing data onchain.
Since the restrictions on the usage of OP_RETURN outputs encourage harmful practices while being ineffective in deterring unwanted usage, i propose to drop them. I suggest to start by lifting the restriction on the size of the scriptPubKey for OP_RETURN outputs, as a first minimal step to stop encouraging harmful behaviour, and to then proceed to lift the restriction on the number of OP_RETURN outputs per transactions.
Antoine Poinsot
[^0]: See section 6.1 of their whitepaper here https://citrea.xyz/clementine_whitepaper.pdf
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next reply other threads:[~2025-04-17 19:09 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2025-04-17 18:52 'Antoine Poinsot' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List [this message]
2025-04-18 12:03 ` Sjors Provoost
2025-04-18 12:54 ` Greg Sanders
2025-04-18 13:06 ` Vojtěch Strnad
2025-04-18 13:29 ` 'Antoine Poinsot' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
2025-04-18 21:34 ` Antoine Riard
2025-04-20 8:43 ` Peter Todd
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