The Bitcoin Core developers’ plan to get rid of the relay limit on OP_RETURN data has caused many people to react strongly. This change will go live in the next Bitcoin Core 30 release, which is set for October 2025. The change would let people add up to 4 MB of any kind of data to Bitcoin transactions, which is more than the old limit of 80 bytes.
What the Update Does and Why It Is Important
Bitcoin’s OP_RETURN function lets users add metadata to transactions without making those outputs spendable. In the past, this was limited to 80 bytes to keep the blockchain from getting too big and to stop spam. But as protocols like Ordinals and different DeFi use cases have become more popular, the need for more on-chain data storage has also grown.
Developers of Bitcoin Core say that raising the cap has many advantages. It makes node behavior easier, makes sure that transaction relay policies are in line with what miners already put in blocks, and stops bad practices like putting data in spendable outputs. This change in policy doesn’t affect consensus rules; it only affects how relays work. Nodes can still choose to reject or filter transactions based on how they are set up.
People in the community are split on what this means
Even though the proposal is technically neutral, some people in the Bitcoin community have strongly criticized it. Some people think this could hurt Bitcoin’s ability to be a peer-to-peer financial protocol and say it could lead to too much non-financial data being stored on the blockchain. Some people like the change because they see it as a natural progression of Bitcoin’s programmable features and a necessary step toward supporting use cases like NFTs, token issuance, and better smart contract metadata anchoring.
Bitcoin Core contributors stress that node operators will still be in charge of their policies. The update only gets rid of an old bottleneck in the default settings; it doesn’t make anyone change how they act.
This discussion brings up bigger philosophical questions about Bitcoin: should it only be used for money, or should it be open to more innovation at the data layer? This change makes it look like Bitcoin Core prefers flexibility and permissionless experimentation, as long as miners and users are willing to pay the fees for transactions.
The OP_RETURN update will likely be included in Bitcoin Core version 30, which is set to come out in October 2025. Node operators who want to keep the old behavior can still do so by using configuration flags, but these will be marked as deprecated in the future.
As more nodes get upgraded and the relay landscape changes, you can expect more discussions about mempool policies, fee economics, and content moderation at the network edge. In the next few months, we’ll find out if the Bitcoin ecosystem can find a balance between performance, openness, and a principled minimalism.
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