op_return spam is beneficial

The discussion revolves around the economic and technical considerations of limiting the usage of OP_RETURN in Bitcoin transactions, highlighting its implications on spam, decentralization, and future protocol development. The limited supply of funds available for spam activities within the Bitcoin network operates under the assumption that not constraining this would lead to financial transactions being overwhelmed by unlimited spam funds. Utilizing OP_RETURN saves at least one Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO), mitigating the risk of UTXO bloat—a significant concern for blockchain decentralization. This approach of saving UTXOs indirectly supports network health by diverting funds that would contribute to spam into enhancing hash power instead.

There is an ongoing debate about the rationale behind restricting the use of OP_RETURN, mainly centered around the perception that Bitcoin should not be used for data storage. This stance is seen as a form of virtue signaling to emphasize Bitcoin's primary purpose amidst social pressures on core maintainers. However, yielding to such pressures without substantial technical justification could have adverse long-term effects, potentially undermining the protocol's integrity in response to non-technical critiques.

Moreover, the discussion touches upon a technical issue unrelated to censorship concerns but critical for network functionality: the challenge presented by contiguous scriptpubkey data. This problem emphasizes the necessity of maintaining high minimum transaction fees to discourage the relay of transactions that are unlikely to be mined or paid for, ensuring the network does not waste resources on processing unconfirmed transactions. This measure is crucial for the stability and efficiency of L2 protocols that depend on the relay network and these unconfirmed transactions.