4-byte prefix guideline for OP_RETURN on Bitcoin

Back from the CoinGeek conference in Hong Kong, I could feel that the extra capacity of OP_RETURN increased to 223 bytes on Bitcoin has tremendously energized the community. Tons of talented people are now back to work, building cool stuff on top on the Bitcoin infrastructure.

Yet, the blockchain is a shared resource, and while scalability is a very solvable challenge, the community needs principles to avoid needless complications. In particular, as the OP_RETURN data space is shared among all participants, an opt-in mechanism to avoid “dumb” collisions is highly desirable.

At Lokad, we intend to do everything we can to support Bitcoin blocks so large that even incredibly ambitious tokens become feasible on Bitcoin. Thus, today, I am publishing an guideline that represent an intent of support for protocols who abide to well-specified protocol identifiers.

Lokad 4-byte prefix guideline for OP_RETURN on Bitcoin https://github.com/bitcoincashorg/bitcoincash.org/blob/master/spec/op_return-prefix-guideline.md

Claim your 4-byte protocol identifier today at https://github.com/bitcoincashorg/bitcoincash.org/blob/master/etc/protocols.csv

This approach is opt-in. This guideline will not break any existing protocol that do not comply. By abiding to this guideline, the authors of a Bitcoin protocol are merely opting to get free infrastructure support from some folks who just happen to be developing the Bitcoin infrastructure.

Nothing more. Nothing less.