{"id":880368,"date":"2025-12-25T00:11:53","date_gmt":"2025-12-25T06:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/25\/new-bitcoin-proposal-could-permanently-ban-ordinals-and-nft-transactions\/"},"modified":"2025-12-25T00:11:53","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T06:11:53","slug":"new-bitcoin-proposal-could-permanently-ban-ordinals-and-nft-transactions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/25\/new-bitcoin-proposal-could-permanently-ban-ordinals-and-nft-transactions\/","title":{"rendered":"New Bitcoin Proposal Could Permanently Ban Ordinals and NFT Transactions"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n

\n <\/p>\n

Crypto Journalist<\/p>\n

\n

Anas Hassan<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n

Crypto Journalist<\/p>\n

Anas Hassan<\/span>\"Verified\"<\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

Part of the Team Since<\/p>\n

Jun 2025<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

About Author<\/p>\n

Anas is a crypto native journalist and SEO writer with over five years of writing experience covering blockchain, crypto, DeFi, and emerging tech.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

Last updated:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"New<\/p>\n

A controversial Bitcoin development proposal to permanently eliminate Ordinals inscriptions<\/a> and Bitcoin Stamps<\/a> has sparked fierce debate within the developer community.<\/p>\n

The draft, known as \u201cThe Cat<\/strong><\/a>,\u201d would mark millions of dust-sized outputs containing NFT data as permanently unspendable through a consensus-level soft fork.<\/p>\n

The proposal targets what its author, Claire Ostrom, describes as an unprecedented explosion in Bitcoin\u2019s UTXO set.<\/p>\n

Between 2009 and early 2023, the UTXO database grew gradually to roughly 80-90 million entries.<\/p>\n

\"Bitcoin
Source: Bitcoin Development Mailing List<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Within just one year, it doubled to over 160 million entries, with analyses suggesting nearly half of all UTXOs now contain less than 1,000 satoshis.<\/p>\n

The Cat would identify these outputs using external indexers like Ord and Stamps, then render them permanently unspendable while allowing nodes to prune them from the UTXO set entirely.<\/p>\n

Maxwell Calls Proposal \u201cOutright Theft\u201d<\/span><\/h2>\n

Bitcoin<\/strong><\/a> Core developer Greg Maxwell delivered harsh criticism, calling the proposal a \u201ctotal non-starter<\/em><\/strong>\u201d that would constitute theft.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe proposal would intentionally and knowingly confiscate millions of dollars in funds,<\/em>\u201d Maxwell wrote in response to the Bitcoin development mailing list.<\/p>\n

Maxwell disputed claims that spam filters are ineffective, arguing that the current setup already blocks most pointless data storage, except for uses that are more valuable because of Bitcoin\u2019s limitations.<\/p>\n

He warned the proposal would likely trigger a flood of evasion transactions while failing to stop NFT trading<\/a>, since indexers operate independently of consensus rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cNFTs are just an imaginary parallel world that don\u2019t depend on the network to validate their activity,<\/em>\u201d Maxwell explained.<\/p>\n

\"Bitcoin
Source: Bitcoin Development Mailing List<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The legendary developer also criticized the proposal\u2019s length and technical complexity, suggesting it should have been floated as a simple question about discouraging NFTs rather than dense technical documentation.<\/p>\n

He pointed to the potential misuse of language models<\/a>, leading to unnecessarily complex proposals that waste participants\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

Supporters See Essential UTXO Cleanup<\/span><\/h2>\n

Bitcoin Mechanic, a prominent anti-spam advocate, offered cautious support despite acknowledging philosophical concerns about UTXO deletion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t consider it unreasonable for Bitcoin users to do this if they see fit as the UTXO set is something that they must contribute resources to maintaining in perpetuity,<\/em>\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

The proposal\u2019s supporters emphasize that between 40-50% of the UTXO set consists of spam outputs with dust amounts.<\/p>\n

Removing these would provide substantial disk space savings, particularly for maximally pruned nodes.<\/p>\n

Developer Nona YoBidnes argued the proposal would send a strong signal to discourage future spam activity.<\/p>\n

\u201cLess spam is the objective here. I\u2019m not concerned with the price of spam, only the quantity,<\/em>\u201d Nona stated.<\/p>\n

However, supporters acknowledge the unprecedented nature of consensus-level UTXO deletion.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin Mechanic noted that while spam filters can be easily fixed if misconfigured, mistaken UTXO deletion would be catastrophic.<\/p>\n

The proposal addresses this by imposing extensive verification requirements and encouraging the community to independently validate snapshots of the targeted outputs.<\/p>\n

Alternative Proposal Emerges<\/span><\/h2>\n

A competing proposal called \u201cLynx<\/strong><\/a>\u201d by Matteo Pellegrini takes a different approach, suggesting periodic cleanup tied to Bitcoin\u2019s halving schedule rather than targeting specific protocols.<\/p>\n

At each halving, UTXOs below 999 satoshis that remained unspent for 4 years would become permanently unspendable.<\/p>\n

Pellegrini argues this threshold-based method avoids The Cat\u2019s reliance on external indexers and protocol-specific targeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy using a threshold rather than a list, Lynx requires no external indexers, makes no judgment about why a UTXO is small, and applies equally to all participants,<\/em>\u201d the proposal states.<\/p>\n

Maxwell also rejected Lynx, noting that dust thresholds aren\u2019t consensus parameters and that predictably inactive outputs have minimal performance impact.<\/p>\n

He suggested the mailing list should ban future proposals to confiscate coins for a year, warning that they risk undermining public confidence in Bitcoin.<\/p>\n

Escalating Battle Over Bitcoin\u2019s Purpose<\/span><\/h2>\n

The controversy follows months of escalating tensions over Bitcoin\u2019s role. <\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Ordinals leader Leonidas threatened to fund a Bitcoin Core fork<\/a> if developers attempted censorship, claiming support from miners controlling over 50% of the hash rate and startups that contributed over $500 million in transaction fees since 2023.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

The same month, Developer Jimmy Song also criticized the earlier Taproot upgrade<\/a> for creating a \u201csocial attack surface<\/em><\/strong>\u201d that enabled spam-like activity, arguing it failed to deliver on privacy promises while opening the door to nonfinancial transactions.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the October Bitcoin Core v30 upgrade<\/a> removed the 80-byte OP_RETURN limit, enabling data payloads of up to 4MB per transaction.<\/p>\n

The change also sparked an exodus to Bitcoin Knots, an alternative implementation that now represents 28% of the network.<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n \n \n \n \n <\/svg>
\n Follow us on Google News <\/a>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Joan Paris<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Crypto Journalist Anas Hassan Crypto Journalist Anas Hassan Part of the Team Since Jun 2025 About Author Anas is a crypto native journalist and SEO writer with over five years of writing experience covering blockchain, crypto, DeFi, and emerging tech. Last updated:\u00a0 December 24, 2025 A controversial Bitcoin development proposal to permanently eliminate Ordinals inscriptions<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":880369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4041,26097],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-880368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bitcoin","category-proposal"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/880369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}