Chun Wang was the co-founder and CEO of F2Pool a major Bitcoin mining pool. He resisted a temporary soft fork that was proposed to limit data spam in the Bitcoin network.
Wang wrote a letter in the Monday edition of X post The following are some examples of how to use “BIP-444 is a bad idea.” The F2Pool team and the author of this article are both listed as being involved in the project. “not going to soft fork anything,” What is it? “temporary or not.”
Then he said “Feel sad that some devs [are] moving further and further in the wrong direction.”
Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 444 (BIP 444) is a temporary proposal to soft-fork the Bitcoin network. Its proponents see it as primarily spam. The soft fork would limit non-transaction data — which enables alternative uses for the Bitcoin blockchain — to 83 bytes, among other limitations.
Related: Bitcoin upgrade is splitting developers and purists
BIP-444 and its raison d’être
BIP-444 seems to be in response to the late-September update by leading Bitcoin node software Bitcoin Core. This update is in question removed the 80-byte cap on OP_RETURNThe transaction script is a component that allows the user to insert arbitrary data.
Many people have perceived the change to be a capture by corporations of the Bitcoin chain, as it allows them to build layer 2, and other infrastructures on Bitcoin. Some argue that the addition of more data to the blockchain will result in a faster increase in its size.
Other people pointed out this was part of a discussion that dates back to the very early days Bitcoin) (BTC). In addition, supporters of the changes point out it is difficult to enforce a law that contradicts their own incentives. A January 2024 review It was found that some miners like F2Pool were already including nonstandard transactions, which exceeded OP_RETURN limits.
BIP is a BIP. submitted This is the pseudonymous development Dathon Ahm. “Reduced Data Temporary Softfork” You can suggest to others that they should also consider suggesting this. “temporarily limit the size of data fields at the consensus level.” It would be valid until the block number 987,424 of Bitcoin or roughly 1.27 year from now.
You can also send a mailing to a specific recipient listThe creator explained that “the idea is to strongly reaffirm in consensus that bitcoin is money, not data storage.” “After a year, the soft fork expires, giving us time to come up with a more permanent solution,” They said.
Related: Ordinals dev floats forking Bitcoin Core amid censorship concerns
What is BIP-444?
BIP-444 is a temporary soft fork that would close most data-embedding paths on Bitcoin, including stricter size caps on outputs and pushes, bans on annex, unknown witness versions, deep Taproot trees, OP_SUCCESS* and conditional branches. This limits Ordinal-based non-fungible token (NFT) creationSimple monetary values are not affected by large data loads and complex scripts.
According to the BIP, modern data compression allows for embedding. “objectionable images (often illegal to even possess) in as few as 300–400 bytes.” The system would then allow you to use the “a malicious actor to mine a single transaction with illegal or universally abhorrent content and credibly claim that Bitcoin itself is a system for distributing it.”
Peter Todd is a Bitcoin developer, and also a cypherpunk. He believes that it’s ineffective for achieving the intended result. Todd showed this by embedding BIP-444’s entire text into a Bitcoin transaction This would comply with the soft-fork.
However, the advocate of the change emphasized that the cost to send it was over $100 and claimed that the embedding of illegal data would become more difficult. “it would not make sense to hold node operators legally responsible.” He explained that:
“If Bitcoin provides an officially supported method of storing arbitrary data […] node operators could conceivably be held responsible for possession and distribution.”
Some people still view this distinction as being arbitrary and unrealistic. One user demonstrated By sharing two commands to gather information from an image that is stored in the Bitcoin network we can show how few differences there are.
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Source: cointelegraph.com
