They did not make a change to allow it, because it is already allowed. They removed a relay filter that can be bypassed.
If someone wants to taint bitcoin they will do it. The evil actors who would actually do it do not care about whether it is made easy for them.
So then why’d they bother making the change at all?
The filter incentives creation of infrastructure for submitting transactions directly to miners and bypassing relays.
But you just said it was already allowed and bad actors don’t care how easy it is?
Yes, what is your point? My point is there are transactions being sent directly to miners bypassing the mempool, and that is a danger to bitcoin. Either way, using OP_RETURN will be made easier - do you want it to be made easier because miners collaborate to build a cloud API for wallets to submit transactions directly to them?
Markets work. People that submit monkey jpeg transactions are not going to switch to OP_RETURN and pay 4x more just because they can.
So now using opreturn is easier and yet they’re not going to use it because it’s 4x more expensive? Confused.
Exactly. Making op_return easier is not about enabling monkey jpegs. It's about keeping the bitcoin transaction market intact. A transaction "black market" is bad for bitcoin, especially if it becomes more "legitimate" (read: KYC, easy UX) than the mempool
