Bitcoin Core Developers Caught Red-Handed in the OP_RETURN Spam Drama!

by

Bitcoin Mechanic, the mysterious global head of sales at Ocean Mining (sounds fancy, right?), is throwing some serious shade at Bitcoin Core developers, accusing them of cozying up to Citrea, a Bitcoin Zero Knowledge (ZK) expansion product, to shove a bunch of “spam” into the blockchain. Yes, you read that right. Spam. Blockchain. What a time to be alive. 😏

So, there’s this whole kerfuffle going on about whether the OP_RETURN spam guardrail should be removed from Bitcoin. Some people are pointing their fingers at Bitcoin Core developers like they’re the problem. Ocean Mining’s Bitcoin Mechanic (because apparently, we’re all just one big mysterious operation) is not holding back on this one.

According to Mechanic, Bitcoin Core is teaming up with Citrea to open the floodgates for spam. Yes, you heard it—spam. It’s like the internet in the 2000s, but with less dancing baby gifs.

Bitcoin Mechanic tweeted:

Citrea *need* your mempool to tolerate their junk, and Core are determined to help them with that by forcibly removing one of your spam filters.

But wait, there’s more! Mechanic suggests that this whole spam situation is really about making Citrea’s product “financially viable” by shifting the costs onto regular folks just trying to send some bitcoin. So, your grandma could end up footing the bill for this lovely spam party. 🥳

Enter Jameson Lopp, founder of Casa and a big-time investor in Citrea, who’s having none of it. He’s out here denying the whole “collusion” thing and is like, “Nope, Citrea doesn’t use OP_RETURN for its regular operations, and here’s a post to prove it.” 🍿

Lopp even went so far as to say that Citrea only uses OP_RETURN for fraud challenges, which, according to him, will probably never even happen because of the disincentives. A true hero of the digital age. 🦸‍♂️

But Lopp is also kind of a fan of fighting spam by, get this, increasing Bitcoin adoption. Revolutionary, right? He wants people to use self-custody tools and pay a little more for that precious Bitcoin blockspace. It’s like asking people to pay for premium internet speed. Not a bad idea, honestly.

Meanwhile, in a twist that’s about as dramatic as a soap opera, the number of Bitcoin nodes using Knots, a Bitcoin Core alternative, spiked 49% in April. Knots is all about letting users configure spam prevention options, because we all know spam is the real villain here. Even so, Bitcoin Core is still the dominant player, with 94.78% of the total reachable nodes on the network. Talk about holding onto power like it’s your last slice of pizza. 🍕

Read More

2025-05-06 14:17