New Bitcoin Proposal Seeks to Ban Ordinals and NFT Transactions Permanently
A draft proposal named The Cat aims to permanently eliminate Ordinals inscriptions and Bitcoin Stamps via a consensus-level soft fork. This would render NFT data outputs unspendable and pruneable from the UTXO set by identifying targeted outputs with external indexers such as Ord and Stamps, marking them as permanently unspendable, and allowing nodes to prune them.
The proposal highlights a rapid expansion of the UTXO set from roughly 80-90 million entries in 2009 to early 2023, which surged to over 160 million within one year. Analyses reveal nearly half of the UTXOs contain less than 1,000 satoshis. Supporters of the proposal, including Bitcoin Mechanic, argue that removing spam outputs—which constitute 40-50% of the UTXO set—would save disk space for fully or maximally pruned nodes. Additionally, Nona YoBidnes suggests the measure would deter future spam.
However, prominent Bitcoin Core developer Greg Maxwell criticized the proposal as a “total non-starter,” warning it would confiscate millions of dollars worth of assets. He further cautioned that it could trigger evasion transactions and would not effectively stop NFT trading. Maxwell also rejected an alternative proposal called “Lynx,” created by Matteo Pellegrini, which advocates for a halving-aligned cleanup. Lynx suggests that at each halving event, UTXOs under 999 satoshis unspent for four years would become unspendable, avoiding the need for external indexers. Maxwell noted that dust thresholds are not consensus parameters and that inactivity patterns are uncertain, proposing a ban on future confiscation proposals for a year to protect public confidence.
This debate occurs amid wider tensions concerning Bitcoin’s fundamental purpose. Ordinals ecosystem leader Leonidas has threatened to fund a Bitcoin Core fork if censorship is enforced. Additionally, the October v30 upgrade removed the 80-byte OP_RETURN limit, with Bitcoin Knots now representing about 28% of the network.
