Bitcoin (BTC) Knots Node Software Downloads Spike as Developers Propose Controversial Increase to the Data Storage Capacity of a Script

The number of Bitcoin full node operators protesting a controversial increase to the data storage capacity of a Bitcoin script operation code has hit an all-time high since Core developers began proposing that change last month.

Internet-connected full nodes tagged by the Knots client that reject the proposed increased data limit have more than doubled since the so-called “OP_RETURN war” began in April.

At a major conference of Bitcoin developers starting today in Austin, the main topic of discussion will be pull request (PR) 32359 and mempool policy, with a final decision on the proposal expected momentarily.

The proposal is a revised version of PR 28130, which Chaincode Labs’ Antoine Poinsot reintroduced in March. The PR asks Core contributors to lift the roughly 80-byte restriction on the datacarrier limit of OP_RETURN outputs.

As Core contributors signaled their willingness to proceed with the change, software downloads of an alternate full node client, Knots, skyrocketed.

Disagreements over the proposal have divided the Bitcoin community. Many smaller data limit camps, who typically run the Knots client, see the proposal as an example of Core developers succumbing to corporate and venture capital interests in using bitcoin’s largest mempool as a distributed database.

Allowing easier proliferation and validation of images, music, games, contracts, and non-transactional data is a slippery slope that undermines bitcoin’s primary purpose of displacing fiat, they argue.

For the larger data limit camp, increasing OP_RETURN’s datacarrier simply normalizes its on-chain data storage limits with other ways to store arbitrary data in bitcoin transactions, such as witness outputs. Removing the cap is a simple, unremarkable upgrade.

Core planning to implement PR 32359

In March, several Core contributors, including Blockstream engineer Greg Sanders, planned to implement PR 32359 within a few days.

At the time, the proposal had already garnered dozens of “NACK” votes from contributors and a factor in the ultimate decision.

”We'll be merging PR 32359 for increased OP_RETURN size and discussing the potential for a user-mode switch to disable relay of high-fee transactions,” Sanders wrote at the time.

”The goal is to land both within the next few days. We'll keep the community updated on progress.”

Knots’ default mempool will not lift the datacarrier limit of OP_RETURN, no matter what Core decides.

Therefore, the growth of reachable Knots nodes — which reached an all-time high of 6.5% yesterday, according to tracker Coin.dance — is a proxy for measuring the resistance movement.

Other clients include btcd, Bitcore, and UASF.

Although there are hundreds of thousands of full node operators in the world, it’s impossible to quantify how many full nodes actually exist. Bitcoin is purpose-built to accommodate nodes with intermittent internet access, and nodes are free to join and leave the network at any moment.

Reachable node trackers like Coin.dance, Bitnodes, or Clark Moody use various types of internet monitoring tools to estimate the number of nodes that are reachable at any given moment.