Bitcoin Core New Proposal: Will It Revive Inscription and Miners?
2025 has already passed its midpoint, and Bitcoin has previously surpassed new highs. Traditional financial giants such as BlackRock and the National Strategic Reserve Fund have entered the market, viewing Bitcoin as a safe-haven asset; large companies are also emulating MicroStrategy’s strategy of holding Bitcoin as a reserve.
However, this embrace from traditional finance has not fully benefited the internal BTC network. A haunting tale is that, although the outside world is bustling, the transactions on the Bitcoin network itself have entered an ice age. According to the latest data from The Block, the 7-day moving average transaction volume on the Bitcoin network has dropped to $317,000, marking a 19-month low since October 2023. In October 2023, Bitcoin’s price was around $27,000, and during that time, only 270,000 transactions were packed into Bitcoin blocks weekly; today, Bitcoin’s price has reached $100,000, yet only 250,000 transactions are being packed into blocks weekly. In simple terms, while the price has indeed risen significantly, there is little activity on the Bitcoin chain. This figure is far below the peak seen during the explosion of Bitcoin inscriptions in the spring of 2023.
You could say it is becoming increasingly like digital gold, with low-frequency transactions. But do not forget that Bitcoin miners rely on transaction fees for their livelihood. The third halving in 2024 will reduce block rewards to 3.125 BTC, making transaction fees a vital lifeline for their income. However, the current inactivity on-chain forces some miners to accept transactions below 1 sat/vB to maintain operations. Looking back to the spring of 2023, the inscription boom triggered by the Ordinals protocol sparked ecological vitality, with BRC-20 tokens like $Ordi driving a surge in transaction volume, a stark contrast to the current slump. The frozen BTC network is in urgent need of rebirth.
In recent days, a transaction proposal from Bitcoin Core has hinted at a thawing — it aims to adjust the transaction rules of the Bitcoin network, allowing more data to be recorded on-chain, which may bring new life to struggling miners and the cooling inscription ecosystem.
This proposal has sparked intense discussions on the internet, with 700,000 views and hundreds of comments by the time of publication, but it has been scarcely reported by domestic media. We have organized the key content as follows.
Bitcoin Core New Proposal: No Limits on Transactions
The proposal from Bitcoin Core is a statement regarding transaction relay policies, co-signed by 31 relevant developers. Its core idea is that the node software of the Bitcoin network should minimize interference with transactions, allowing more economically driven transactions to be relayed and packed into blocks.
The reason this proposal has garnered widespread discussion is that it sounds like a technical adjustment but could have profound implications for the activity level on the Bitcoin chain, miners’ income, and the inscription ecosystem. First, you need to understand what transaction relay means. In simple terms, transaction relay is the process by which nodes in the Bitcoin network propagate transactions. You can liken it to a dispatcher on a highway, responsible for directing vehicles (transactions) to ensure they reach the miners’ “worksites” (packaging into blocks) smoothly. In this process, nodes determine which transactions can be propagated based on specific rules and which need to be filtered out.
In the past, the relay rules for Bitcoin nodes were relatively strict, especially for transactions containing large amounts of data (such as inscription transactions), which might be rejected for occupying block space or having too low fees. The Bitcoin Core proposal introduces an important principle: as long as a transaction has economic demand and can be accepted by miners, nodes should not obstruct its propagation. This concept of “flexible relay” could make the “traffic” of the Bitcoin network more free. Specifically, nodes will reduce restrictions on transaction size, fees, etc., allowing more transactions to be smoothly propagated to miners.
The diversity of transactions will increase, especially those containing non-financial data (such as inscriptions and BRC-20 tokens), which may now be more easily propagated and packed.
What Does This Have to Do with Inscriptions and Miners?
Clearly, this policy adjustment of “flexible relay” also evokes thoughts of a key feature in Bitcoin scripts: OP_RETURN. This feature is directly related to the rise of inscriptions. OP_RETURN is an opcode in Bitcoin scripts that allows users to attach a small amount of data to a transaction. The current limitation for this opcode is 80 bytes; this data is not considered a valid Bitcoin output and cannot be spent. You can think of it as a “small parcel” on a truck; while it does not directly participate in transactions, it can store information, such as:
- Document hashes (for proof)
- NFT metadata
- BRC-20 token information
This OP_RETURN design was originally meant to record simple information, such as on-chain messages. However, the 80-byte limit is too small to accommodate complex content, yet developers have managed to make significant moves using it. In the spring of 2023, the Ordinals protocol utilized Bitcoin’s Taproot feature and OP_RETURN, allowing users to mint inscriptions and tokens on the blockchain. Inscriptions embed data into Bitcoin transactions, achieving NFT-like functionality, while BRC-20 further expands the application scenarios for tokens. This innovation ignited activity on the Bitcoin chain at the time, even leading to transaction congestion and a spike in miners’ fees, resulting in a wave of inscription spring.
However, the 80-byte limit greatly restricts the potential development of OP_RETURN, as users cannot upload more complex content (such as larger images or videos), limiting Bitcoin’s potential as a decentralized data storage platform.
Although the aforementioned proposal does not directly mention OP_RETURN, its principle of “flexible relay” may indirectly relax the usage of OP_RETURN:
- Reduce node interference with transactions: The proposal advocates that nodes should not refuse to propagate transactions with economic demand. If this principle is adopted, nodes will be more inclined to relay transactions containing OP_RETURN data rather than rejecting them based on data size or type.
- Promote data limit relaxation: The spirit of the proposal may lay the groundwork for future relaxation of OP_RETURN’s 80-byte limit. As relay policies adjust, the community may further explore the feasibility of expanding OP_RETURN’s data capacity.
- Improve transaction propagation efficiency: Even if OP_RETURN’s data limits remain unchanged, the proposal could significantly enhance the propagation efficiency of transactions containing OP_RETURN data, preventing transaction failures due to node filtering.
The prosperity of inscriptions and BRC-20 once drove miners’ fee income to new highs. If the OP_RETURN limit is relaxed, more users will be willing to pay higher fees to upload complex data. This not only alleviates the income pressure miners face after the halving but also incentivizes them to support the new relay policies.
It is also worth mentioning that this proposal is relatively easier to accept from a technical standpoint. The adjustments proposed only involve transaction relay policies rather than Bitcoin’s consensus rules. Relay policies only determine whether nodes propagate certain transactions and only affect the efficiency of transaction propagation without changing the legality of transactions. Therefore, the implementation of the proposal is relatively simple; it only requires Bitcoin Core to release a new version, and users and miners can choose whether to upgrade.
Having understood this, let us go through a practical example to outline its potential real-world impact. Suppose a user wants to mint a high-resolution NFT image on the Bitcoin chain, but the metadata for the image requires 200 bytes of storage space. You can clearly see the comparison between the current rules and the rules after the Bitcoin Core proposal:
Ultimately, user experience will be greatly enhanced, and miners’ income will increase. Bitcoin Core’s proposal may seem like a minor adjustment to transaction relay policies, but it could be a key step toward “thawing” the Bitcoin network. More importantly, this proposal opens the possibility of relaxing OP_RETURN limits, allowing businesses to use Bitcoin transactions to store hashes of important documents, ensuring data immutability, and providing more imaginative space for Bitcoin’s non-financial use cases.
Community Voices
The new proposal from Bitcoin Core is like a stone thrown into a pond, creating ripples in every direction. Currently, both supportive and opposing voices in the community are quite evident. For instance, crypto KOL 0xTodd believes that flexible relay returns to Satoshi Nakamoto’s spirit of no limits, enabling miners to earn more income; he also does not see them as junk transactions, as inscriptions pay according to their size.
Bitcoin will never become a storage chain, but having some data stored as a part-time job is not a big deal, as long as it does not harm the underlying principles. Real physical gold can be carved to leave a record, and the BTC that everyone calls electronic gold should also allow this.
However, opponents are more concerned that the increase in on-chain data will lead to further issues. Under the original post of Bitcoin Core, some users have criticized the proposal, claiming that Bitcoin Core “ignores the purity of Bitcoin” and turns the network into a “universal Swiss Army knife,” sacrificing the interests of volunteer nodes and users.
More people are worried that flexible relay will lead to an influx of “junk transactions,” crowding block space. For example, Luke Dashjr, a “hardcore” core developer, directly responded with “NACK” (no action) to the statement, believing that the proposal is misguided and predicts that transactions that are mined are no different from censorship, violating the principle of anti-censorship. Glassnode data shows that the blockchain has reached 500GB; if data surges, the costs for full nodes will skyrocket, potentially reducing the number of decentralized nodes and pushing the network toward the abyss of centralization. Opponents argue that Bitcoin should focus on its monetary function rather than act as a storage chain.
The division within the community is also reflected in node distribution. CoinDance data shows that 93% of nodes run Bitcoin Core, while 7% use alternative clients (such as Bitcoin Knots). Knots, which refuse inscription transactions due to their “junk filter,” have become a stronghold for the opposition. If the proposal passes, Knots users may continue to resist, and the potential for client usage splits in Bitcoin has already emerged.
Historical lessons abound; the 2017 SegWit2x controversy nearly split the network. Will this debate replay a similar scenario? The key to the future lies in community consensus. This debate is far from over. Supporters see hope for miners’ income and ecological innovation, while opponents guard decentralization and monetary purity. The fate of the proposal depends on code reviews on GitHub and the willingness of nodes to upgrade. If the community reaches consensus, flexible relay could be implemented within months, potentially reigniting the spring of inscriptions; if divisions worsen, Bitcoin’s ice age may continue, even leading to client forks.
This is a debate not about Bitcoin prices, but about the thawing within the Bitcoin ecosystem, which still awaits spring.
This article is collaboratively republished from: Deep Tide