Can someone explain to me how data storage works on the BTC blockchain?
Witness data and OP_RETURN?
Can this allow illegal content on the blockchain?
I read about the recent discussion regarding the Bitcoin Core update that would facilitate this type of data on the chain, potentially being a veiled attack on BTC as a whole (after all, storing illegal content on a computer, even if it's a node, is a crime and puts everyone at risk).
Data Storage in Btc Blockchain
byu/Ok-Depth608 inBitcoinBeginners
Posted by Ok-Depth608
2 Comments
Nothing has changed other than a mempool policy issue. Miners are already able to mine these OP_RETURN transactions and have been for a while. Bringing the mempool policy in line with what miners are doing makes the network more efficient and disincentivizes bad uses of the UTXO set. The change does not facilitate putting data on the blockchain because that was already possible and has already been happening.
There is a lot of misinformation being spread about this topic for political reasons or by people who really don’t understand Bitcoin well.
Here is an earlier post that describes the context of this :
https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/1kgjy8e/can_someone_eli5_the_op_return_topic/
>Can this allow illegal content on the blockchain?
Illegal content has already been placed on the Bitcoin blockchain many years ago. It is impossible to prevent this if someone pays the fees unless Bitcoin becomes a centralized Permissioned network.
Full node operators are safe legally because they have no control to prevent it **as long as they don’t create tools to retrieve that data**
https://x.com/BobMcElrath/status/1962512119078781164
>I read about the recent discussion regarding the Bitcoin Core update that would facilitate this type of data on the chain, potentially being a veiled attack on BTC as a whole
This is untrue for multiple reasons:
1) This illegal content was already embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain in many forms many years ago and is permanently there
2) OP_RETURN is easier to identify and prune than other methods of embedding data
3) If Spammers wanted to use OP_RETURN they would actually have less space to add their spam because of the witness discount. Using OP_RETURN actually decreases the resources to include this spam
4) If we start setting the norm to filter out transactions than you open the door for governments to suggest full nodes should add other filters to your full nodes like filtering out addresses and UTXOs on the OFAC compliant lists .
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If you want to run knots or filter addresses locally be my guest. I have been testing multiple full node implementations , including knots for many years already and its perfectly fine to locally filter or run any implementation you want. Just don’t lie and spread misinformation on this topic.