Debate in the Bitcoin community over proposed UTXO handling from Ordinals and Stamps

A recent discussion on the Bitcoin-dev mailing list has sparked intense debate around the rapid increase of UTXOs, mainly stemming from Ordinals and Bitcoin Stamps. Many developers warn that uncontrolled, non-monetary UTXO expansion could put significant long-term pressure on network performance and increase node operating costs.

To address this issue, a draft proposal called “The Cat” has been introduced, which suggests permanently marking “non-monetary UTXOs” valued below 1,000 satoshis as unspendable through a soft fork, potentially reducing UTXO size by 30% to 50%. Conversely, the “Lynx” proposal takes a more neutral approach by automatically disabling dust UTXOs that have been inactive for over four years, allowing periodic cleanup of UTXOs without directly interfering with user intent.