Bitcoin, the world’s largest and oldest blockchain, is confronting an existential question of how much data should live on its ledger.
A new proposal, Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 444 (BIP-444), seeks to roll back a recent OP_RETURN upgrade that allowed users to attach text, images, and digital signatures to transactions.
Its supporters call it a necessary defense against legal exposure. However, critics say it’s a misguided overreach that could fracture Bitcoin’s open ethos.
BIP 444
Bitcoin has endured countless ideological battles from scaling wars to environmental disputes. However, only a few have carried stakes this fundamental.
At the center is Luke Dashjr, one of Bitcoin’s longest-serving developers, who is supporting BIP-444, which wants to roll back the controversial update to the OP_RETURN function. That function, part of Bitcoin’s scripting language, allows users to attach small amounts of metadata to transactions.
Earlier this month, Bitcoin Core 30.0 expanded that capacity from 80 bytes to 100,000 bytes, effectively turning Bitcoin into a limited-purpose data ledger.
Its backers argued that the changes would enable timestamping, document verification, and decentralized authentication, without compromising the flagship digital asset’s monetary integrity.
However, Dashjr and others saw danger in the move.
They argued that the update could let anyone upload arbitrary files, including CSAM, directly onto the blockchain.
They furthered that ordinary users would be exposed to legal risk simply for running Bitcoin’s validating software since every full node must store all valid transactions.
According to the proposal:
“It allows a malicious actor to mine a single transaction with illegal or uni
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Author: Oluwapelumi Adejumo
