I’m worried that a coming change to Bitcoin core will have nodes peddle illicit JPGs.

TL;DR - Bitcoin is a life raft out of the fiat system. I’m worried that the software change to bitcoin core, which 80% of nodes run, will lead to illicit images being much-more-directly stored on the Bitcoin blockchain. This could mean each node is processing and propagating images that is illegal in pretty much every nation. This could impact the decentralization of Bitcoin.

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Why is there not enough attention paid to the removal of the OP_RETURN limit being proposed in Bitcoin Core? This is a big change that’s occurring without broad consensus and a firm opposition.

This would allow arbitrary data blobs (up to 100KB) to be permanently stored in the blockchain. That means JPGs (you can guess what that might be)— or anything else — could be embedded, and every full node would be forced to store that data forever.

This is a major shift. Even if technically it doesn’t require a soft fork or hard fork, it is controversial and has huge implications. Bitcoin SV (lol) made the same change and illicit material was quickly added to its chain. Why wouldn’t adversaries do the same here? Politicians can latch on to the Bitcoin-is-a-CP-peddler theme and turn the public against it.

If Bitcoin aims to be the global reserve asset, shouldn’t any potentially controversial change require broad, explicit consensus? Otherwise, how is this governance model fundamentally different from fiat — where a small group decides the rules for everyone else? And what happens if people are terrified of running nodes? We lose decentralization.