The first debate about arbitrary data in the blockchain happened in December 2010 and Satoshi was involved
On 8th December 2010, Satoshi released Bitcoin version 0.3.18, which included a standardness check, to only include known transaction types
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On 8th December 2010, Satoshi released Bitcoin version 0.3.18, which included a standardness check, to only include known transaction types
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Some were concerned that this would prevent people using the blockchain to store arbitrary data
Just 10 minutes later, “RHorning” complained:
“This is the first update to [Bitcoin] that I'm not jumping on and grabbing right away”
Just 10 minutes later, “RHorning” complained:
“This is the first update to [Bitcoin] that I'm not jumping on and grabbing right away”
Another 10 minutes passed and Theymos chimed in. Theymos said that miners wouldn’t care about standardness rules because they want to maximise fee revenue. Theymos even confirmed this with the miners & said he would make a patch to remove the standardness check
@Snyke decker noted that this is the first real dispute and that this was Bitcoin’s coming of age
@Snyke @jgarzik was not happy about those that complained to Satoshi, telling people to start their own chain rather than including “non-currency data” in the blockchain
@Snyke @jgarzik Da2ce7 said that it was all about fees and that fees will pay for the generation of the chain in the future. If non-standard transactions paid the right fees, they were fine by him
@Snyke @jgarzik @jgarzik was not happy with this, he didn't what non-cash use cases pricing out people who want to use Bitcoin as money
@Snyke @jgarzik “Chaord” noted that “arbitrary data can already be disguised in standard transactions” and asked for a special space of 128 bytes or less for arbitrary data
@Snyke @jgarzik Theymos wasn't really happy with any restriction, when miners "miners have an interest in including any and all fee-carrying transactions”
@Snyke @jgarzik Satoshi then came back into the discussion. Saying that new transaction types can be added if applications (like BitDNS) needed it. Satoshi was saying things could change within a few days, so people didn't need to worry about the new client not relaying unknown txn types
@Snyke @jgarzik Gavin then explained that the whitelist for known transaction types was his idea. Gavin was still open to “arbitrary data”, its just this change was done for security reasons, to stop scripting hacks
@Snyke @jgarzik Satoshi agreed with Gavin. Satoshi expressed support for “hash sized arbitrary data” and said this could already be done
@Snyke @jgarzik Some people expressed concern that allowing arbitrary data could mean that “kiddie porn” could get into the chain
@Snyke @jgarzik Others retorted that “It is impossible to completely prevent that kind of abuse unfortunately”
@Snyke @jgarzik The debate continued, with some claiming that if the arbitrary data was allowed in the protocol by design, using client defaults, the government would see it differently
@Snyke @jgarzik Theymos then released a patch client, that removed the restrictions on non-standard transactions. The @peterktodd of the day. Ironically, today Theymos has quite a balanced opinion in our view. Favouring Core over Knots, but not with such a strong view like he had then
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