In the escalation of Bitcoin Op_return War, the leader of the world’s most popular software change initiative for Bitcoin nodes proposes extraordinary punishment for anyone trying to delay future changes to the network.
Bitcoin Core’s default Mempool argues that it needs to accommodate a large amount of corporate data storage and information that are not related to the Bitcoin (BTC) on-chain movement. Peter Todd is coding severe punishment For node operators filtering large transactions from operators of Todd’s accommodation, Libre Relay.
Currently, the default MEMPOOL setting in the Bitcoin Core Node software does not relay large OP_RETURN output. Meanwhile, as with Todd’s Libre Relay, direct members like Mara Slipstream, like Mara Slipstream, will accept these non-standard transactions.
but, Those who don’t like Todd’s Libre Relay in Corporate Data Storage have created so-called “Galbagueman” software that will be punished by Libre Relay Node operators People who propagate such large transactions.
When viewing a queue of large transactions that are unrelated to the on-chain movement of BTC in Libre Relay as a sly workaround, the Garbageman node attempts to exclude certain transactions by pretending to be a Libre relay node and attacking a civil attack on the broadcast.
This makes their attempts to broadcast large transactions around the Bitcoin network.
In response, Todd is working on a counterattack to protect his software.
He is working on a reliable way in which a Bitcoin node operator drops (cuts) a Gunbargeman node and estimates that a node is carrying out this Gerbageman attack through complex mathematics and code derived from Greg Maxwell’s previous work.
Bitcoin galbagueman
For context, the Bitcoin community is fighting a minor civil war this year over chain data storage. Protos have been covering their fight for several months.
Specifically, two camps are rebutting the default data storage allowance for pending transactions or “Mempool” Bitcoin Core queues.
With tens of thousands of nodes connected to the Internet at any time, Bitcoin Core is the world’s most popular software client for verifying and broadcasting BTC transactions.
For over a decade, its default setting prevented transactions with OP_Return output exceeding 83 bytes to propagate across memory.
However, the employer has begun looking for a way to publish more quantities than 83 bytes via this OP_Return DataCarrier.
Earlier this year, a suite of venture capitalists-funded Altcoin projects called Citrea encouraged Chaincode Labs’ Antoine Poinsot to reintroduce Todd’s proposal to raise its data carrier limits to nearly 4MB.
Citrea is on display at the Bitcoin 2025 Expo.
In 2023, Todd submitted a pull request 28130, which did not reach consensus. Nevertheless, in 2025, Poinsot resubmitted an even more aggressive version of 28130 as 32359. Bitcoin Core Full Node Operator Does Not Allow It to Down.
Poinsot and Todd and the friendly Chaincode Lab and Brink developers have strengthened substantial support for the 32359, but opposing non-user configurability was too much.
They eventually got a bit more tolerant and added configurability to the Pull request.
The changes to Op_return are scheduled to be made public in October
In addition to that gesture, weeks of meiotic rhetoric on social media worked.
After months of disagreement that threatened to turn into a civil war, Poinsott and Todd declared victory and planned for an October development.
If version 30 Bitcoin core replaces version 29 with this schedule, the default member of the most popular full node software is the latest version No longer filters Op_return output on any data exceeding 3.9MB.
Read more: Samson Moe claims Peter Todd is “paid” for op_return PR
It is a massive victory for businesses looking to publish their rolled up data to Bitcoin ledgers, and a disappointing loss for Bitcoin node operators who want to limit their hard drives to data related to on-chain BTC movements.
In the meantime, Todd is not satisfied with his enemy’s tactics and has coded complicated punishments for his Libre Relay software to those who run his “Garbageman.”
