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UTXO Growth Pressures Bitcoin Nodes Amid Ordinals and Stamps Boom
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Bitcoin’s UTXO set has doubled in recent years, surpassing 160 million entries, largely due to Ordinals inscriptions and Bitcoin Stamps storing arbitrary data. Many outputs are tiny, non-monetary transactions that increase node storage requirements and validation costs.
“The Cat” BIP proposes classifying these outputs as Non-Monetary UTXOs (NMUs) and making them non-spendable, allowing nodes to prune them and reduce infrastructure burdens. Advocates argue this deters spam economically and signals that Bitcoin prioritizes monetary transactions.
The proposal, still under community review, highlights ongoing tensions between efficiency and preserving Bitcoin’s principles of censorship resistance and transaction neutrality.
