The upgrade to version 30 brings both improvements and controversy with the increase of the OP_RETURN limit from 80 to 100,000 bytes.
The Bitcoin community finds itself divided after the official launch of the Bitcoin Core v30 update. The release, which introduces changes to node architecture, performance, and security, has sparked mixed reactions among developers, miners, and users.
Key updates
The Bitcoin Core development team has implemented several new features designed to enhance the user experience on the network. One notable addition is optional encrypted node-to-node connections, aimed at ensuring greater privacy for users.
The official announcement on October 12 also clarified that with the release of this new major version, all versions prior to 27.x have reached End of Life and will no longer receive security or maintenance updates.
One of the main changes is the reduction of default transaction fees. Nodes can relay transactions with fees as low as 0.1 sat/vB, while miners will be able to include them in the next block with a minimum fee of 0.001 sat/vB.
The most hotly debated change concerns the expansion of the OP_RETURN limit, which has increased from around 80 bytes to 100,000 bytes. This adjustment allows for much larger amounts of non-financial data to be stored within Bitcoin transactions.
Although the update also includes bug fixes and performance improvements, it is the OP_RETURN limit increase that has captured most of the attention and divided the community.
Reactions
Alex Bergeron, Ecosystem Lead at Ark Labs, expressed excitement about Bitcoin Core v30 on X, stating his intention to “use all of the additional OP_Return space and will use it to make Bitcoin more like Ethereum, except better.”
Pavol Rusnak, co-founder of Satoshi Labs, said he chose Bitcoin Core v30 for its “great development team, peer reviewed code, sane engineering decisions.”
Critics of the update argue that this change violates Bitcoin’s core principles as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Concerns include the potential growth of the blockchain’s size, higher operational costs for nodes, and legal risks.
Last week, Nick Szabo, a well-known cypherpunk, recommended on X:
Earlier in October, Szabo had already raised concerns about the legal implications of increasing the OP_RETURN limit. According to him, node operators risk hosting “illegal data” for which they could be held criminally liable.
In recent months, in response to Bitcoin Core’s decisions, a significant number of node operators have adopted the alternative implementation Bitcoin Knots, which allows for strict data size limits to be applied. Data from Clark Moody Bitcoin shows that there are currently nearly 5,000 active Knots nodes, representing about 20% of all nodes.
