You can now spam JPEGs in Bitcoin private keys
Developers in favor of the contentious Bitcoin Core version 30 software update cheered today when a cryptographer invented a new way to spam Bitcoin’s blockchain with images without using OP_RETURN. After months of civil war over the proper limitations of this scripting tool, this new method showed that even reducing OP_RETURN’s datacarrier allowance to zero would not prevent all forms of arbitrary data storage. OP_RETURN is the most popular storage area for large quantities of data unrelated to the on-chain movement of BTC. Core is fighting with a forked client of its node software, Knots, about the maximum amount of arbitrary data that the two camps will relay around the Bitcoin network’s queues of pending transactions or ‘mempools.’ Core version 30 will update the default datacarrier threshold to nearly 1MB, whereas Knots prefers a number closer to 80 bytes. Unfortunately, as today’s discovery proves, neither setting can guarantee against all forms of on-chain spam...