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A new BitMEX Research study reveals that BRC-20 tokens create significantly more strain on Bitcoin node operators than Ordinal images. Despite similar storage requirements, BRC-20 transactions expand the UTXO set and complicate verification processes. The research also surprisingly found that large Ordinal inscriptions may actually speed up certain aspects of node verification.
- BRC-20 tokens expanded Bitcoin's UTXO set from 84M to 169M between 2022-2025, creating node operational challenges
- Large Ordinal images showed 11% faster verification speeds due to storage in Taproot's non-executed witness space
- BRC-20 transactions have paid over 5,000 BTC in fees since protocol introduction despite straining node performance
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Related Tags: Bitcoin
Other Tags: BitMEX Research, BRC-20, Glassnode, Ordinals