Scan reveals 96,000 fake-address outputs clogging Bitcoin’s unspent database

Blockchain data firm Bitquery scanned 965,135 Bitcoin blocks and identified two distinct ways text is embedded in transactions, highlighting a significant impact on node storage.

OP_RETURN data vs. fake‑address text

OP_RETURN outputs store arbitrary data but are not kept in the UTXO database, so they only increase block history size. Bitquery counted 13,062 OP_RETURN taunt transactions across 579 blocks, paying a total of 0.1014 BTC in fees.

In contrast, fake‑address text places readable bytes where an address hash belongs, creating outputs that appear spendable but have no corresponding private key. These outputs remain in the UTXO set, adding a lasting burden to node state. The scan found 96,231 such outputs in 3,286 transactions, representing about 3.2 BTC of effectively unspendable coins.

Impact of Bitcoin Core v30.0

Bitcoin Core 30.0, released in October 2025, raised the default -datacarriersize to 100,000 bytes and allowed multiple OP_RETURN outputs under an aggregate limit. While this change eases the relay of larger OP_RETURN data, it does not alter consensus rules.

After the upgrade, messages longer than the previous 80‑byte limit appeared more frequently, rising from a few dozen per month to thousands by February 2026. The March 2026 campaign that taunted developer Luke Dashjr used a 62‑byte OP_RETURN payload, which already fit under the old limit.

Node‑state consequences

OP_RETURN data expands the blockchain’s historical record without inflating the UTXO set. Fake‑address text, however, creates persistent UTXOs that nodes must track, effectively “clogging” the unspent database.

Bitquery’s analysis excluded coinbase fields for 191,427 historical blocks and did not count witness inscriptions, focusing on the state impact of the four measured channels.