Dathon,

> if Bitcoin provides an officially supported method of storing arbitrary data (i.e., OP_RETURN), and the capacity of that method is large enough to store hazardous content in a contiguous format (an increase to 100kB is currently underway as Bitcoin Core 30 gains adoption), then one does not need to misinterpret the data in order to view the content.

This seems to be the crux of your argument. I believe it is misleading and technically unsound. It's technical theater that creates a distinction without any meaningful difference.

First, Bitcoin has no concept of a file viewer. To interpret any embedded data other to validate it against Bitcoin's rules, you must use a third party tool. Practically speaking, the differences are negligible in terms of technical difficulty, as humorously demonstrated here: https://x.com/rot13maxi/status/1963318690759192622 . Contiguous or not, you're file carving. 

Second, by definition, you're misinterpreting the data vis-a-vis Bitcoin since it has no native concept of 'image', 'video', etc. Arbitrary bytes are meaningless. The purpose of having OP_RETURN as a standard output is to protect the UTXO set from being abused. It isn't some kind of 'blessing' to store files. That's absurd. As you admit, it's impossible to stop people from writing arbitrary bytes to the blockchain, so this is damage mitigation, not an invitation.

Third, contiguity is not a legally meaningful predicate. "Your honor, we tried to limit the contiguous bytes!" is simply not going to fly. The bytes exist either way, and they must be interpreted by third party software either way. If anything, this path is going to represent a voluntary self-policing that will result in more culpability. Right now, arbitrary bytes don't mean anything in Bitcoin. If it's valid, it's valid. Nodes relay opaque protocol data. If you insist on only accepting 'approved' arbitrary bytes, you're opening the door to a knowledge/intent accusation.

Regards,

Kyle

 

On Monday, October 27, 2025 at 1:36:33 AM UTC-4 dath...@proton.me wrote:
Peter -

Thank you for demonstrating what non-contiguous data looks like.

I trust you when you say that you can parse the BIP's contents from this transaction, but all it looks like to me (and the Bitcoin network) is a UTXO broken into 31 pieces then (mostly) re-consolidated into a 0-length OP_RETURN, sending all ~100 USD in fees to the miner.

Since legally hazardous content can be generated from any input data, including your 30-input consolidation transaction (as long as the correct third-party program is used), it would not make sense to hold node operators legally responsible for storing and distributing such input data.

However, if Bitcoin provides an officially supported method of storing arbitrary data (i.e., OP_RETURN), and the capacity of that method is large enough to store hazardous content in a contiguous format (an increase to 100kB is currently underway as Bitcoin Core 30 gains adoption), then one does not need to misinterpret the data in order to view the content. In that case, node operators could conceivably be held responsible for possession and distribution.

Since arbitrary data storage does nothing to benefit Bitcoin as permissionless money, there is no good reason to force this additional legal risk on node operators, who already face enough challenges as it is.

Best,

Dathon


On Sunday, October 26th, 2025 at 4:43 PM, Peter Todd <pe...@petertodd.org> wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 25, 2025 at 08:43:11PM +0000, dathonohm via Bitcoin Development Mailing List wrote:
>
> > Hi list -
> >
> > Due to Bitcoin Core v30 gaining in popularity, it has become necessary to move forward on luke-jr's ML proposal to temporarily limit arbitrary data at the consensus level, which so far has 3 weeks with no objections:
> >
> > https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/2017
>
>
> Transaction 8e2ee13d2a19951c2777bb3a54f0cb69a2f76dae8baa954cd86149ed1138cb6c
> contains the full text of this BIP as of writing(1), while simultaneously being
> compliant with that BIP.
>
> Clearly, this approach is ineffective.
>
> 1) https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/3c718237072c107ced8c3531a487354fbdae55df/bip-%3F%3F%3F%3F.mediawiki
>
> --
> https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
>
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