Bitcoin Flooded with Heavy Blocks After Failed Restriction Attempt

A recent attempt to limit data on the Bitcoin network had an unexpected outcome. After the failure of BIP-110, a proposed soft fork designed to temporarily restrict nonfinancial data, the network was flooded with deliberately 'heavy' blocks.

Ripple CTO Emeritus David Schwartz weighed in on the debate, stating that in public blockchains, someone else's opinion of someone else's transactions 'doesn't matter one bit.'

The Bitcoin block 962266 provided a vivid example of this. Its visualization showed that traditional monetary transfers were in the minority, with NFT inscriptions and custom scripts taking up most of the space.

Schwartz, who approached the crisis from a mathematical standpoint as the chief architect of the XRP Ledger, argued that arguments about excessive resource consumption are only legitimate until that consumption is paid for. He urged skepticism towards demands to ban transactions, as doing so would turn Bitcoin into something resembling a traditional bank.