PANews reported on October 27th that, according to The Block, a debate among Bitcoin developers over blockchain data capacity has spawned the controversial proposal BIP-444. This proposal, introduced after the Bitcoin Core v30 update removed the upper limit on the amount of data that can be added via OP_RETURN, has only been adopted by approximately 6.3% of nodes. BIP-444 proposes limiting OP_RETURN outputs to 83 bytes and most other scriptPubKeys to 34 bytes, effectively blocking outputs containing large scripts or data blocks. The proposal also limits the size of individual data pushes, invalidates currently unused or undefined script versions to prevent circumvention of the limits, limits the size of embedded Merkle trees in Taproot outputs, and prohibits OP_IF in Tapscripts, effectively eliminating the ordinal inscription method. These changes will be implemented via a temporary soft fork, expected to last a year, to allow developers to explore alternative data storage solutions. Critics argue that this violates Bitcoin's permissionless nature and constitutes censorship. Jameson Lopp of Casa noted that the proposal lacks clear definition of the issues at stake and raises questions about the legal liability of node operators. The proposal has not yet been submitted to the bitcoin development mailing list for feedback, but it has sparked heated discussion on social media.


