Bitcoin Core v30 goes live with controversial OP_RETURN change

Bitcoin Core launched its major v30 update on Saturday, with the community split over its drastic increase to the OP_RETURN data limit.

Bitcoin Core developers saw a mixed reaction from the Bitcoin community as they announced the release of their v30 update, bringing forward a host of node-related changes to architecture, performance, and security.  

The key changes brought forward in Bitcoin Core 30.0 are the introduction of optional encrypted connections between nodes for better privacy and the increase of the OP_RETURN data limit within Bitcoin Core software from 80 to 100,000 bytes, enabling a significantly larger amount of non-financial data to be embedded in Bitcoin transactions.   

“With the release of this new major version, versions 27.x and older are at ‘End of Life’ and will no longer receive updates,” the Sunday announcement reads. 

While the update also included bug fixes, performance improvements and changes to fee rates, the biggest issue to stir debate in the community is the increase of the OP_Return limit.

Read more