Bitcoin developers debate proposal for temporary soft fork to block 'spam transactions'

A Bitcoin (BTC) improvement proposal to prevent spam activities abusing Bitcoin has been released, but it has emerged that the proposal is causing debate among developers.

On the 27th (Korean time), according to crypto-focused media The Block, "Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP)-444" was made public, proposing to limit the amount of arbitrary data that can be attached to transactions to prevent illegal content from being recorded on the blockchain. The proposal was written by a new contributor named "Dathon Ohm" and would take effect through a temporary soft fork of about one year.

After the Bitcoin Core v30 update, the limit on attaching command data had been removed. Therefore, some have raised concerns that there is a risk that Bitcoin transactions could be abused to record illegal content such as child sexual exploitation material on the blockchain.

Luke Dashjr said he supported it, stating, "(BIP-444) has no technical objections as a short-term countermeasure."

There are also opposing opinions. Leonidas criticized, "Limiting data insertion is no different from censorship," and said, "Blocking image files or meme coin transactions sets a dangerous precedent like a state censoring currency transactions."