Bitcoin Core v30 could cause ‘catastrophic’ node shutdown, critics warn

Bitcoin Core could trigger a meltdown across BTC exchanges and mining pools if it goes ahead with plans to raise data limits with its upcoming version 30 (v30) software.

This is according to Bitcoin Mechanic, a vocal advocate for limiting arbitrary data storage on Bitcoin’s blockchain.

Developers have been fighting all year over the default amount of data unrelated to the on-chain movement of bitcoin (BTC) that most nodes should accept into their queue of pending transactions.

For over a decade, almost all Bitcoin node operators have capped their mempools’ OP_RETURN datacarrier below 90 bytes.

Bitcoin Mechanic, who leads a group of Knots node operators who are protesting Core’s proposal to lift OP_RETURN’s datacarrier to 100,000 bytes, claims that a likely outcome of this staggering increase is a catastrophic, forced shutdown of hosted nodes and cloud infrastructure connected to the Bitcoin network.

Propagating malware across hosted Bitcoin Core v30 nodes

Specifically, Mechanic believes a malicious actor will utilize Bitcoin Core v30’s new 100,000 byte default to add contiguous chunks of undesirable code into the memory chips of cloud-hosted nodes.

Once stored and relayed — even temporarily — automatic malware detection could knock hundreds or even thousands of nodes offline that support BTC exchanges and mining pools.

Third-party hosting services like Amazon, Azure, Google Cloud, and Digital Ocean employ frequent malware detection across many of their machines.

As exchanges and mining pools go offline in his forecasted catastrophe, Bitcoin Mechanic believes developers will create temporary fixes. These band-aids will then become even more difficult to properly fix.

Read more: Three sneaky changes in Bitcoin Core v30 are confusing node operators

Centralized mining pools will allegedly face pressure to create custom data filters. Mechanic forsees third-party software to block malware, viruses, or CSAM from entering mempools.

All of this could have been prevented by leaving OP_RETURN’s datacarriersize alone in the first place, he argued.

Mechanic advocates for a fork of Core software, Knots, which will not increase the OP_RETURN datacarriersize in its default mempool.

Peter Todd claims Bitcoin Mechanic is lying

According to Peter Todd, Mechanic is lying about this future vulnerability. “No sane cloud provider is going to shutdown servers automatically,” Todd argued.

Indeed, very few Core developers agree with Mechanic’s forecast. In fact, they’re sticking to a scheduled release of v30 for next month.