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* [bitcoindev] Relax OP_RETURN standardness restrictions
@ 2025-04-17 18:52 'Antoine Poinsot' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
  2025-04-18 12:03 ` Sjors Provoost
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 5+ messages in thread
From: 'Antoine Poinsot' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List @ 2025-04-17 18:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Bitcoin Development Mailing List

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Hi,

Standardness rules exist for 3 mains reasons: mitigate DoS vectors, provide upgrade hooks, or as a nudge to deter some usages.

Bitcoin Core will by default only relay and mine transactions with at most a single OP_RETURN output, with a scriptPubKey no larger than 83 bytes. This standardness rule falls into the third category: it aims to mildly deter data storage while still allowing a less harmful alternative than using non-provably-unspendable outputs.

Developers are now designing constructions that work around these limitations. An example is Clementine, the recently-announced Citrea bridge, which uses unspendable Taproot outputs to store data in its "WatchtowerChallenge" transaction due to the standardness restrictions on the size of OP_RETURNs[^0]. Meanwhile, we have witnessed in recent years that the nudge is ineffective to deter storing data onchain.

Since the restrictions on the usage of OP_RETURN outputs encourage harmful practices while being ineffective in deterring unwanted usage, i propose to drop them. I suggest to start by lifting the restriction on the size of the scriptPubKey for OP_RETURN outputs, as a first minimal step to stop encouraging harmful behaviour, and to then proceed to lift the restriction on the number of OP_RETURN outputs per transactions.

Antoine Poinsot

[^0]: See section 6.1 of their whitepaper here https://citrea.xyz/clementine_whitepaper.pdf

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 5+ messages in thread

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-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2025-04-17 18:52 [bitcoindev] Relax OP_RETURN standardness restrictions 'Antoine Poinsot' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List
2025-04-18 12:03 ` Sjors Provoost
2025-04-18 12:54   ` Greg Sanders
2025-04-18 13:06     ` Vojtěch Strnad
2025-04-18 13:29     ` 'Antoine Poinsot' via Bitcoin Development Mailing List

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