This optionality became the standard network policy recently. The network by default began treating every transaction as replaceable at a higher fee regardless of whether the user opted in for a replacement.
Because the entire network now handles transaction replacements automatically, the explicit “replace later” signaling in Bitcoin wallets has become redundant — a vestigial piece of code that leaves unnecessary digital fingerprints of the wallet involved in the transaction.
So, developers are proposing a code change to remove this signaling mechanism from the wallet software.
“There is an intention in the bitcoin core wallet to remove the BIP 125 RBF signaling in transactions for which a PR is raised. The primary reason for its removal is because ever since full-RBF became a standard policy, this signaling has become redundant,” developer rkrux posted to the developer-mailing list.
Camouflage issues
Implementing this requires careful planning because if different wallets delete this replace function in different ways, then transactions processed through these wallets will look distinct on-chain, which makes them easy to track.
Note that removing a signal may sound as simple as removing a sticker off a box or a button from a screen, but that’s not the case in Bitcoin, where the signal is a mandatory field that must be filled with a value.
