Peter Todd's Proposal on Bitcoin OP_RETURN Limit Causes Rift Between Core Developers and Community

Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd has proposed removing arbitrary limits on the size of OP_RETURN, igniting a heated debate. This deep controversy reveals profound divisions over the purpose of Bitcoin and its future.

OP_RETURN is the opcode that allows small data payloads to be included in Bitcoin transactions

Collision of Bitcoin Core developers and the community over OP_RETURN limits

Peter Todd's Proposal #32359 on GitHub will lift the long-standing restrictions on the amount of data that can be stored using OP_RETURN, which is currently limited to 80 bytes.

One of the candidates for Satoshi Nakamoto theories, Peter Todd argues that the change will simplify the Bitcoin codebase. He also highlights the potential to improve efficiency without jeopardizing the network.

Since OP_RETURN outputs are unspendable, they do not increase the size of the unspent transaction outputs (UTXO) set that all full Bitcoin nodes must track to validate transactions.