A full history of OP_RETURN, its protocol-level inconsistencies, and why the issue persists in Bitcoin Core v30Continue reading on Coinmonks »A full history of OP_RETURN, its protocol-level inconsistencies, and why the issue persists in Bitcoin Core v30Continue reading on Coinmonks »
The Bitcoin Data Carrier Bug: When Consensus Permits What Policy Forbids
A full history of OP_RETURN, its protocol-level inconsistencies, and why the issue persists in Bitcoin Core v30
Michael P. Di Fulvio
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The Bitcoin Data Carrier Bug: From OP_RETURN to Core v30
1. Introduction
Bitcoin has always been permissive in what its consensus layer will accept. That’s both a strength (resilient neutrality) and a weakness (attack surface). The Data Carrier bug sits right at this intersection: a mismatch between Bitcoin’s consensus rules, which allow large OP_RETURN payloads, and Core’s standardness/policy rules, which try to keep them small.
This bug first emerged in 2014 with the introduction of OP_RETURN and remains unresolved today in Core v30, despite multiple policy tweaks. In fact, the issue is more relevant than ever in the age of Ordinals and inscriptions.
2. Early History: Arbitrary Data in Bitcoin
Before OP_RETURN, the only way to store arbitrary data on-chain was to abuse spendable outputs.
Common tricks:
- Fake pubkeys in bare multisig: stuffing random bytes into
m-of-nmultisig…
Market Opportunity
Core DAO Price(CORE)
$0.1159
$0.1159$0.1159
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Core DAO (CORE) Live Price Chart
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