The upcoming major upgrade of Bitcoin Core has reignited longstanding tensions within the community, dividing developers who advocate for a neutral, fee-based network from purists who consider non-financial data to be spam.
Bitcoin Core v30, anticipated in October, will eliminate the 80-byte limitation on OP_RETURN, the section of a transaction script that permits users to embed arbitrary data.
Bitcoin Core is the software driving the Bitcoin network, overseen by an open group of developers, and is heavily relied upon by miners and node operators. Although alternatives like Knots exist, Bitcoin Core remains the reference implementation used by the majority of the network.
At first glance, the disagreement appears to be a policy debate about whether Bitcoin’s blockchain should be reserved solely for financial transactions or be opened for broader applications. However, the dispute reflects deeper political divisions, with some factions accusing Bitcoin Core of compromising principles or yielding to external pressures.
The battle over Bitcoin’s purpose
Critics of Bitcoin Core v30 caution that lifting the OP_RETURN cap could lead to spam and resource depletion. They argue that larger OP_RETURNs promote non-monetary transactions that overshadow payments and increase the load on nodes.
Proponents of a money-first ideology view this as an abuse of the system, asserting that Bitcoin was intended as a peer-to-peer payments network, not a data hosting platform.
This viewpoint is reflected in Bitcoin Knots, an alternative client maintained by Luke Dashjr, which imposes stricter default policies to block what it classifies as non-financial data. Knots aims to hinder the relaying or embedding of arbitrary content.
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Core developers justify their decision on different grounds. Gloria Zhao, a maintainer of Bitcoin Core, stated that supporters of the change “aren’t enthusiastic about data storage as a use case” but advocate for a decentralized market for blockspace by not enforcing relay rules stricter than what miners already accept.
“Existing standard methods (e.g., bare pubkeys) contribute to bloating the UTXO set, representing a long term cost to the network,” she said in a GitHub discussion, emphasizing that OP_RETURN is prunable and less detrimental.
Supporters of Knots counter that lifting the cap raises the risk of illegal material being permanently inscribed on the blockchain, including the potential for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to be recorded if the cap is removed.
Bitcoin developer and advocate Jimmy Song — who is not supporting v30 — dismissed that argument, stating that data embedded in Bitcoin is “not readily accessible.”
“Core version 30 does not display any images or videos or play any audio,” Song said. “Running software that checks whether a block or transaction complies with Bitcoin’s rules does not make you complicit in the unseemly activities the transaction might be involved in.”
Bitcoin’s corporate capture debate
Beyond the technical discussions, the v30 upgrade has sparked a political undercurrent regarding the actual independence of Bitcoin Core.
Critics have suggested that Core developers are favoring initiatives like the layer-2 project Citrea, claiming that lifting the OP_RETURN cap aligns conveniently with the requirements of rollups that depend on embedding larger data payloads into Bitcoin for validation.
Others question the very rhetoric of neutrality. They perceive the “fee-driven” approach as a means to legitimize non-financial transactions, potentially paving the way for non-fungible tokens and inscriptions.
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Core developers reject these assertions, emphasizing that decisions are made transparently on GitHub, Internet Relay Chat, and mailing lists, and dismiss allegations of corporate capture as politically motivated claims from the “money-only” group. For them, v30 is about allowing the transaction fee market to determine outcomes while keeping Bitcoin’s rules neutral and open.
“If a small, socially engineerable ‘inner circle’ were truly making software decisions for the entire network, then Bitcoin would be an extremely fragile system,” Zhao remarked.
“I genuinely hope that if Bitcoin Core’s contributors otherwise abandon these principles — e.g., to satisfy social media or corporate demands, the community will pivot to another node implementation that performs better.”
Bitcoin Core v30 eyes October release
The debate over OP_RETURN ultimately represents more than mere bytes and scripts. For critics, it’s a struggle to maintain Bitcoin’s identity as sound money, free from the distractions of data experimentation. For Core developers, it centers on aligning software regulations with what the network already accommodates, allowing the blockspace market to self-regulate.
Whether this change triggers a surge of inscriptions or merely tidies outdated relay policies, the upgrade compels the community to revisit a discussion that has lingered since Bitcoin’s inception.
As v30 nears its anticipated October launch, node operators, miners, and businesses will face the choice to upgrade or hold back. This decision, replicated across thousands of machines globally, will not only influence the fate of the OP_RETURN cap but also shape Bitcoin’s definitions of neutrality, independence, and its future role.
The split has led to the surge of Bitcoin Knots nodes. Approximately 400 Bitcoin Knots nodes were operating on the Bitcoin network at the start of 2025; that number has since increased to 4,713. Currently, there are 22,496 public nodes active on the Bitcoin network.
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