Bitcoin Core Functionality & Limitations - Standard Pruning reduces storage from approximately 650 GB to 10 GB by deleting old blocks after validation, but it cannot bootstrap new nodes [1] - OP_RETURN-Specific Pruning keeps block structure and transaction history but removes only OP_RETURN data, still requiring OP_RETURN download for bootstrapping and cannot serve OP_RETURN data to new nodes [2] Economic Incentives & Challenges - The 80-byte OP_RETURN limit was ineffective due to miners ignoring it and users bypassing the public mempool, leading to data going into unprunable formats [3] - Witness/taproot data receives a 75% discount, making it 4x cheaper per byte than OP_RETURN, incentivizing unprunable data storage [3][4] - Removing OP_RETURN limits doesn't address the core issue; data will continue to flow to witness/taproot due to the cheaper cost [5] Prunable Lanes Approach - The Prunable Lanes approach suggests adding a fee discount for OP_RETURN outputs to make it economically competitive with witness for data storage [5] - With Prunable Lanes, nodes can choose between archival (store all) or pruned (drop OP_RETURN), maintaining bootstrapping capacity through archival nodes [6] - The witness discount is identified as the root cause, making unprunable storage cheaper than prunable storage [6]