The OP_RETURN debate continues to rage on. It started as a seemingly minor change to Bitcoin Core’s relay policy. Now, some are calling it an existential threat to Bitcoin.
To the nontechnical pleb, the debate may be dizzying. Why would Bitcoin Core devs ever do such a thing when all of your favorite podcasters and X influencers say this completely destroys Bitcoin?
Well, dear pleb, it’s because this rather innocuous technical decision reveals an inconvenient truth: most of your favorite podcasters and influencers are not that familiar with how Bitcoin actually works at a technical level. When incongruities emerge between Bitcoin’s technical realities and popular narratives, it might appear that the entire system is collapsing. But really, the only thing collapsing is a specific Bitcoin narrative.
This is why the OP_RETURN debate has been largely waged between Bitcoin Influencers and Bitcoin Developers.
The OP_RETURN debate: an information asymmetry issue
Many commenters largely misunderstand Bitcoin Core. It is not a formalized organization; it’s a loose group of contributors with a meritocratic structure dictating who earns github permissions and whose opinions hold sway.
Bitcoin Core contributors are generally so deep in Bitcoin’s technical weeds that they do not spend much time discussing the nitty gritty as talking heads. The most die-hard, laser-eyed Bitcoins may not follow the identity of contributors, their own little world of personal disagreements, and more. The ins-and-outs of this world is just too boring most of the time.
Plebs usually draw their technical knowledge through technical-oriented content creators. These content creators tend to optimize their content around things that average users want to know: how to run a node, how to self custody, how to run a bitcoin miner at home, etc.
However, the content creators tend to not stick to just technical content. They blend self custody videos with long winded discussions on Austrian economics or fiat’s role in cultural decay. These same content creators also do not typically cover more esoteric technical topics. This means it is common for a “technical” bitcoin influencer to actually only have a narrow knowledge of Bitcoin under the hood, but he or she may be considered a go-to expert on all things technical.
Narrative vs technical reality in the OP_RETURN debate
This Satoshi-of-all-trades Bitcoin influencer gave rise to some really great Bitcoin voices, but it also spawned several cultural narratives that will occasionally clash with Bitcoin’s network ontology.
As podcasts became dominant in Bitcoin culture around 2019–2020, several narratives emerged: other blockchains are scams; Bitcoin is “good,” because it lacks the qualities of those other blockchains; and Bitcoin is perfect and never changes.
These narratives were interwoven with what Bitcoin “is” because there were few public arguments which violated these beliefs. When Ordinals popped onto Bitcoin in 2023, many Bitcoin influencers found themselves scratching their heads wondering what went wrong. Surely this shouldn’t be possible. We know that Bitcoin is “good” and NFTs are “bad,” therefore NFTs shouldn’t be on Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin technical community understands that Bitcoin requires a certain amount of arbitrary data in order to construct arbitrary payments to arbitrary recipients with arbitrary rules. The technical community understands that Bitcoin is neutral and permissionless, and it derives its “goodness” from those qualities. Regarding intellectual cross-pollination, it is also much easier for a Bitcoin developer to become well-versed in Austrian Economics than it is for an Austrian economist to become familiar with Bitcoin development.
This is why you will generally notice that the more technical the talking head, the more likely they are to side against filters. Stephan Livera took a little while to come to a conclusion, but as he runs one of the leading technical Bitcoin podcasts, we might have assumed he would side with anti-filters. Alas, he didn’t disappoint.
I’ll pick on Preston Pysh here specifically (sorry Preston). Preston is one of the biggest voices in Bitcoin, but he is an expert on macroeconomics – not Bitcoin script. While he has certainly spent 10,000 hours talking about Bitcoin, we shouldn’t conflate this with an expertise on all dimensions of Bitcoin. Preston reveals his naivety and overconfidence in this tweet.
If we classified all the things Pysh mentions as “spam” worthy of a filter, we wouldn’t have core components of Lightning (CPFPing anchor outputs), barebones multisig, basic noderunner privacy (Tor). (Side note: what the heck does “low feerate txn fee floods” mean?).
The Emperor needs to put his clothes back on
What the OP_RETURN debate has demonstrated is that Bitcoin Core and the Bitcoin technical community have not done a good job communicating their value – not to mention the rationale behind their decisions – to the average bitcoin user. Simultaneously, many leading Bitcoin influencers seem to have drunk their own Kool-Aid and conflated the narrative of what they think Bitcoin is (or should be) versus what Bitcoin actually is.
But this is probably fine.
Every 4-6 years, Bitcoin undergoes a cultural shift. While you may think of yourself as a Bitcoin OG of 5+ years, you have likely only experienced a single dominant Bitcoin culture that is evolving into something different.
Here’s to everyone, influencers and devs alike, adapting to changing circumstances and getting better at using Bitcoin. I feel that Independent Analyst Checkmatey best summarizes the disagreement and the path forward.
