Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson took a thinly veiled jab at Bitcoin’s internal struggles over a controversial code update. In response to escalating concerns about a proposed change to Bitcoin Core’s transaction relay policy, Hoskinson shared a sarcastic GIF captioned “Everything is proceeding exactly as I have foreseen.”
His post comes as tensions rise within the Bitcoin community, with developers like Jason Hughes warning that recent changes could threaten the protocol’s integrity and usefulness.
What Is the Controversy About?
The main issue centers around how Bitcoin handles non-financial data embedded in transactions using OP_RETURN.
This feature lets users attach a small amount of data to a Bitcoin transaction. While OP_RETURN was initially intended for light metadata, some developers believe recent changes could lead to high volumes of unnecessary or spam-like data, leading to “blockchain bloat.”
Bitcoin developer Jason Hughes has led the criticism. Hughes claimed that the new pull request (PR) would allow gigabytes of data to be relayed across the Bitcoin network. Although the data wouldn’t necessarily make it onto the blockchain, the change could still slow down transaction processing and overwhelm individual nodes responsible for relaying information.
Hughes didn’t hold back. He urged mining pools—including AntPool, ViaBTC, Luxor, and others—to reject the update and move away from the current Bitcoin Core codebase. He recommended Bitcoin Knots—a version of Bitcoin maintained by developer Luke Dashjr—as a safer alternative.
Bitcoin Knots uses stricter validation rules and is resistant to spam-like behavior in transaction data.
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Cardano Developers Highlight Bitcoin Wallet Shortcomings
Hoskinson’s comments came after Cardano DRep Psiloblox pointed out flaws in Bitcoin wallet design. Psiloblox highlighted how most Bitcoin wallets don’t allow users to embed messages via OP_RETURN. This discussion arose while Cardano’s Lace wallet is working on Bitcoin integration.
Psiloblox mentioned that Moonshine already allows users to embed messages. He also suggested that wallets add QR code scanning and auto-HEX conversion to improve usability. These observations aimed to illustrate the lack of user-friendly tools in the current Bitcoin ecosystem.
Bitcoin developer Peter Todd also joined the debate. While he acknowledged that Bitcoin Knots provides stricter controls, he said it still allows some types of spam. To fix this, Todd proposed a soft fork introducing new rules restricting non-financial data to only hash digests or public keys.
This would make inserting unnecessary information into transactions more expensive, reducing network misuse. However, Todd admitted that this measure wouldn’t eliminate spam, especially in token trading schemes.