Original Author: 0xTodd, Partner at Nothing Research

The Core team has released a new statement, causing a stir in the Bitcoin Core development community. I noticed there isn't much discussion in Chinese communities, so I'll analyze the background of the story and share my strong opinion. Firstly, yesterday Bitcoin Core released a statement titled "Bitcoin Core Development and Transaction Relay Policy," which dissenters criticized as notorious as the "New York Agreement."

So what did this statement actually say? Bitcoin Core is planning to implement its own built-in transaction relay. I believe this transaction relay is paving the way to undoing the previous OP-Return area restriction. Why has this sparked such intense debate?

It's because there is another story behind the story. I've discussed this before—a trend emerged two years ago where inscriptions began to spread, but these inscriptions, or runes, used a "card Bug"-like method to stealthily store their content in the Bitcoin block's OP-Return area, effectively circumventing the Bitcoin block size limit.

As a result, there are now factions in Bitcoin, the right-wing and the far-right. The inscriptions provoked the far-right, so at the behest of Luke and others, Bitcoin's second-ranking client, Knots, introduced a spam filter that directly labels these inscription transactions as spam and refuses to include them in blocks. If you recall, this even caused Ordi to plummet at the time. However, the mainstream right-wing, namely the Bitcoin Core group, believes that since inscriptions could already exploit the Bug to get on-chain, it's better to legitimize them rather than let them keep exploiting the Bug.

Recently, the Core team proposed a new PR, aiming to change the OP-Return from 80KB to unlimited, effectively lifting the restriction on inscriptions and allowing them to be openly included in blocks. Although inscriptions are mostly washed out now, I believe this is somewhat of an additional subsidy to miners, as earning more can ultimately make the Bitcoin network more secure.

After discussing the background, let's circle back to what this "transaction relay" really is. In theory, Bitcoin is a P2P network, meaning all miners are directly connected. However, this entity represents the most secure theoretical approach, considering the network environment is currently quite secure, there's no urgent need to be so absolute.

So, the concept of "Transaction Relay" emerged. Participants can choose to first send their transactions to a relay (note that this is not mandatory; it is voluntary). This has two main benefits:

1. Helps prevent DoS attacks, as those spamming zero-fee transactions will not overwhelm miners' peer-to-peer servers;2. Speeds up transaction block propagation, reduces latency, and helps prevent large miners from gaining unfair advantages.

It's actually a very good thing. In the past, transaction relays had different strategies; some strictly filtered out spam transactions, while others were completely open.

PS: I do not believe this is transaction censorship; it is more about filtering out spam transactions, and users can choose not to use these features. In fact, the right-wing (Core group) and far-right (such as Luke) both have demands for filtering out spam transactions, but the core contradiction is that everyone has a completely different definition of spam transactions.

The far-right believes that OP_RETURN is a spam transaction and should be eliminated, arguing that Bitcoin should not become a settlement chain. The right-wing, on the other hand, believes that we should not censor (OP_RETURN), restricting certain transactions from being included on the chain. Filters should only filter out those that are pure DoS attacks. PS: Although I used the term far-right here, it does not mean that "far-right" is a pejorative term. The former is radical spam filtering, while the latter is moderate spam filtering.

In the past, these transaction relays were essentially run on a voluntary basis, especially those with "radical spam filtering rules," because the volunteers had strong convictions—hatred for OP_RETURN. However, once the Core group personally added "moderate spam filtering rules" to the Bitcoin client, it may have meant that the market share of those "radical spam filtering rules" from the past suffered a significant contraction.

If you're a bit confused by this point, let me give you an analogy—it's like if one day the authorities suddenly cracked down on CP (Circular Polarization), cracking down on derivative works and controversial pairings. This is what we call official suppression of derivative works. Of course, even though Core currently has a market share of over 90%, Core does not consider itself "official."

Because Bitcoin is a network defined by its users, users have the ultimate freedom to choose what software to use and to implement any policies they wish. Bitcoin Core contributors do not have the power to dictate these matters; to avoid suspicion, they even refrain from automatic software updates.

Personally, I actually support updates like those from the Core team. Like I always say, if your backyard fence is only 10 centimeters tall and everyone can freely come and go, you might as well just take it down. Although personally I don't care much for opcodes, I don't think they are junk transactions. As long as the fee is paid normally, it's a good transaction.

Opcodes also pay fees based on their size, there's no need for conflicts over money. It has even brought additional income to miners, helping Bitcoin maintain strong security even after multiple halvings. And I strongly oppose transaction censorship, Bitcoin's semi-official Core nature leading the way, discriminating against any transaction with a normal fee, because transaction discrimination will slowly turn into transaction censorship.

One of Bitcoin's proudest attributes is security and censorship resistance. By adopting lenient spam filtering rules, it benefits both of these attributes. Critics argue that this is a compromise by the Core team to miners (considering the miners' income) at the expense of its users. I disagree with this view—opcode users are also Bitcoin users.

The times have changed; it's no longer the hardware environment of 2008. If in 2025 Bitcoin's blockchain stores some textual images, it wouldn't be difficult for nodes, and Satoshi himself left the news from that year on the Genesis Block. Bitcoin will never become a storage chain, but without making changes to the core, is there any harm in storing some data as a side job?

Real physical gold can be used to carve out records, and our digital gold should also acknowledge this. That's why I strongly support the proposals from the Core team.

This article is contributed content and does not represent the views of BlockBeats.

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia