Bitcoin Core version 30.0 was officially rolled out over the weekend, introducing improved wallet indexing and accelerated transaction lookups.

The most controversial change was the removal of the 80-byte limit on OP_RETURN, which was a restriction placed on the data that could be included in a transaction output for non-financial purposes.

Critics, including prominent developers Luke Dashjr and Nick Szabo, argued that the change could introduce blockchain bloat, increased node operating costs, network spam, and the risk of illicit data being permanently stored on the blockchain.

Proponents say that allowing more data enhances use cases for decentralized payroll, transparency, and onchain applications, with fees acting as the main regulator of block space.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

“If we socially lose the ability to make rational changes, Bitcoin has far worse problems,” said Blockstream founder Adam Back, who supported the upgrade, and pointed out that it contains “security fixes.”

“If a change is really controversial, the default should be to slam the brakes, not to force-bundle it with ‘security updates,’ mock one side of it, etc,” commented crypto lawyer Gabriel Shapiro.

Bitcoin Knots, an alternative full-node client software for Bitcoin, maintained by Dashjr, now accounts 21.26% for all bitcoin nodes, up from 4% of nodes four months ago.