In a newly published report, Bitmex Research and its analysts say that BRC-20 activity, rather than image inscription, is a major burden on many Bitcoin node operators.
The UTXO explosion was tracked by a BRC-20 transfer, and Bitmex investigation discovered
In the report, researchers argue that small BRC-20 transfers extend the UTXO set and increase the validation load over large image data. Bitmex Research constitutes a strict comparison in terms of node operations rather than policy decisions.
Bitmex Research tallies approximately 97.4 million order inscriptions since late 2022. This includes around 92.5 million BRC-20 events and 2.7 million images. Despite the count gap, researchers found that for the BRC-20, image data occupying about 30.0GB of on-chain and 27.8GB, but the images use less heavy units due to eyewitness discounts.
They emphasize the mechanic: essentially, the payload of the image is sitting in a non-executed Taplout Witness field, so the node bypasses the signature check, a heavy step. In contrast, Bitmex researchers say that BRC-20 transfers are similar to normal transactions, increasing validation and inflated the UTXO set. The report estimates that the UTXO set increased production from 84 million to 169 million between December 2022 and September 2025, primarily related to the use of BRC-20.
It also quantifies the fee. The BRC-20 transaction paid over 5,000 Bitcoin. This means that the output is not discounted by witnesses, so the percentage per byte is higher. Researchers say this helps explain why BRC-20 consumes 13.9 billion units.
To test the effectiveness, the researchers synced Bitcoin Core V29.1 on Ubuntu using eight CPU cores, 8GB RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 1Gbps link. This report explains that it “assumed” “enabled” both on and off to regress the verification rate for ordered volumes.
Bitmex Research reports inconclusive but fairly consistent results. Assuming a valid off, the strongest relationship appears between average ordinal size and validation speed, with R values of about 11%, suggesting that larger images will slower speed verification.
Teams may pay attention to network randomness and over-interpretation of regression by non-full blocks, and may overturn the expected effects. They invite more replicas.
Finally, analysts argue that they do not support the large image as “good” for Bitcoin. Instead, they provide a narrow point: the inscription on the image may slightly facilitate verification, but BRC-20 traffic is a concern for node resources via UTXO growth, despite competing with Blockspace’s financial transactions.
The release follows weeks of intense debate between Bitcoin Core and Node Operators via Bitcoin Knot. Core remains a major client, but Knots, a software variant that enables Spam filtering, has risen to over 19% of nodes in the network.
