New Bitcoin Proposal Could Permanently Ban Ordinals and NFT Transactions

A controversial Bitcoin growth proposal to completely eradicate Ordinals inscriptions and Bitcoin Stamps has sparked fierce debate inside the developer neighborhood.

The draft, generally known as “The Cat,” would mark hundreds of thousands of dust-sized outputs containing NFT information as completely unspendable by a consensus-level delicate fork.

The proposal targets what its writer, Claire Ostrom, describes as an unprecedented explosion in Bitcoin’s UTXO set.

Between 2009 and early 2023, the UTXO database grew steadily to roughly 80-90 million entries.

Within only one 12 months, it doubled to over 160 million entries, with analyses suggesting almost half of all UTXOs now include lower than 1,000 satoshis.

The Cat would establish these outputs utilizing exterior indexers like Ord and Stamps, then render them completely unspendable whereas permitting nodes to prune them from the UTXO set totally.

Maxwell Calls Proposal “Outright Theft”

Bitcoin Core developer Greg Maxwell delivered harsh criticism, calling the proposal a “complete non-starter” that will represent theft.

“The proposal would deliberately and knowingly confiscate hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in funds,” Maxwell wrote in response to the Bitcoin growth mailing record.

Maxwell disputed claims that spam filters are ineffective, arguing that the present setup already blocks most pointless information storage, aside from makes use of which might be extra beneficial due to Bitcoin’s limitations.

He warned the proposal would doubtless set off a flood of evasion transactions whereas failing to cease NFT trading, since indexers function independently of consensus guidelines.

“NFTs are simply an imaginary parallel world that don’t rely upon the community to validate their exercise,” Maxwell defined.

The legendary developer additionally criticized the proposal’s size and technical complexity, suggesting it ought to have been floated as a easy query about discouraging NFTs slightly than dense technical documentation.

He pointed to the potential misuse of language models, resulting in unnecessarily advanced proposals that waste members’ time.

Supporters See Essential UTXO Cleanup

Bitcoin Mechanic, a outstanding anti-spam advocate, provided cautious help regardless of acknowledging philosophical issues about UTXO deletion.

“I don’t think about it unreasonable for Bitcoin customers to do that in the event that they see match because the UTXO set is one thing that they have to contribute sources to sustaining in perpetuity,” he wrote.

The proposal’s supporters emphasize that between 40-50% of the UTXO set consists of spam outputs with mud quantities.

Removing these would supply substantial disk house financial savings, notably for maximally pruned nodes.

Developer Nona YoBidnes argued the proposal would ship a robust sign to discourage future spam exercise.

“Less spam is the target right here. I’m not involved with the worth of spam, solely the amount,” Nona said.

However, supporters acknowledge the unprecedented nature of consensus-level UTXO deletion.

Bitcoin Mechanic famous that whereas spam filters may be simply fastened if misconfigured, mistaken UTXO deletion could be catastrophic.

The proposal addresses this by imposing intensive verification necessities and encouraging the neighborhood to independently validate snapshots of the focused outputs.

Alternative Proposal Emerges

A competing proposal referred to as “Lynx” by Matteo Pellegrini takes a distinct strategy, suggesting periodic cleanup tied to Bitcoin’s halving schedule slightly than concentrating on particular protocols.

At every halving, UTXOs beneath 999 satoshis that remained unspent for 4 years would turn out to be completely unspendable.

Pellegrini argues this threshold-based methodology avoids The Cat’s reliance on exterior indexers and protocol-specific concentrating on.

“By utilizing a threshold slightly than an inventory, Lynx requires no exterior indexers, makes no judgment about why a UTXO is small, and applies equally to all members,” the proposal states.

Maxwell additionally rejected Lynx, noting that mud thresholds aren’t consensus parameters and that predictably inactive outputs have minimal efficiency impression.

He urged the mailing record ought to ban future proposals to confiscate cash for a 12 months, warning that they threat undermining public confidence in Bitcoin.

Escalating Battle Over Bitcoin’s Purpose

The controversy follows months of escalating tensions over Bitcoin’s position.

Earlier this 12 months, Ordinals leader Leonidas threatened to fund a Bitcoin Core fork if builders tried censorship, claiming help from miners controlling over 50% of the hash price and startups that contributed over $500 million in transaction charges since 2023.

Ordinals ecosystem chief Leonidas threatened to fund a Bitcoin Core fork if builders try and censor Ordinals transactions forward of the controversial v30 improve.#Bitcoin #Ordinalshttps://t.co/bYYY1ZKR3i

— Cryptonews.com (@cryptonews) September 8, 2025

The similar month, Developer Jimmy Song additionally criticized the earlier Taproot upgrade for making a “social assault floor” that enabled spam-like exercise, arguing it did not ship on privateness guarantees whereas opening the door to nonfinancial transactions.

Meanwhile, the October Bitcoin Core v30 upgrade eliminated the 80-byte OP_RETURN restrict, enabling information payloads of as much as 4MB per transaction.

The change additionally sparked an exodus to Bitcoin Knots, another implementation that now represents 28% of the community.

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