Maybe I'm wrong, but I am reading your words as follows: Miners will always decide their interests in what type of transactions they wish to mine. Currently, Counterparty uses multisig which are standard transactions. Although we do not wish to add to blockchain bloat, it would appear that as long as we are allowing miners to achieve their economic interests in mining all standard multisig transactions, then the system is working as it should.
Am I understanding your thoughts correctly?
Not exactly. Miners certainly have the ability to decide which transactions they do and don't include, but they have a duty to use that ability to protect the system from abuses.
40 bytes is more than sufficient for all legitimate needs for tying data to a transaction
To me the word "legitimate" is the main problem.
Who can claim the power to say: this data is legitimate and that another is not legitimate. This is called censorship!
The miners have that duty.
The question can not be: What data is legitimate to be stored in the blockchain?
Because this is a subjective question, and that no one can claim to have the answer.
The only question is: Should we allow the storage of data in the blockchain?
These are the same question.
And the answer is: there is no choice, because it is possible to do with multisig transaction.
Bare multisig transactions are not currently used. It's quite possible to turn them off without breaking anything that actually needs multisig-type use.
Furthermore, it's quite possible to determine what multisig usage is actual multisig and which are data store abuses.
So yes, there is a choice...
Too many people were getting the impression that OP_RETURN was a feature, meant to be used. It was never intended as such, only a way to "leave the windows unlocked so we don't need to replace the glass when someone breaks in". That is, to reduce the damage caused by people abusing Bitcoin.
That doesn't make sense to me.
On one hand you're introducing OP_RETURN to stop hackish and inefficient methods to store extra data in the blockchain (like using multisig outputs). On the other hand you reduce OP_RETURN to 40 bytes and say that it was never meant to be actually used – thus forcing people to continue using their hackish solutions.
"Reduce"? No. OP_RETURN was
increased from 0 to 40 bytes.
And no, "don't abuse us with OP_RETURN" does not mean we are forcing you to abuse us in other ways.
If we lock the windows, we aren't forcing the burglar to break them. Stop trying to blame the victim.
Even if you are right in some of your assertions I think that viewing the CP project as a problem for BTC miners and for the BTC network as a whole is shortsighted for all reasons mentioned above. It is true that you guys have a key role and a responsibility for this growing economy and I can understand being conservative to an extent. Yet being a conservative should not be a religious policy and things should be judged by their context and without pre-conceived hostility. ONLY because the success of the CP MSC and other such projects ARE success to human beings in general AND to the crypto space in particular. you probably know why better than me. Words like victim, parasites, and acting against the will of (I dont know who)- is not right nor positive.
work with BTC 2nd generation teams to help them see what bothers you and your team but support the initiative. it is for the best of all. the more such tools will come the better.
I have a small percentage of my overall BTC holdings here but my main investment is and will be BTC for the foreseeable future so I am not writing "from position" but rather from what I feel is the importance of such projects to the BTC penetration.
