We take a second look at Ordinal related data on Bitcoin. We note that by transaction count, BRC-20 tokens are the dominant form of Ordinals, with 92.5 million BRC-20 transactions compared to only 2.7 million onchain Ordinal images. However, when it comes to the amount of data, image related Ordinals are approximately the same size as the BRC-20 Ordinals, at around 30GB. We explain that from a node runner’s perspective, the smaller BRC-20 related transactions, which have a structure reasonably similar to “ordinary transactions” are a significant negative. In contrast, image related Ordinals are larger in size and contain more “arbitrary data”, this has a positive to neutral impact on a node’s resources. Therefore, the BRC-20 tokens may be more of a concern to some node runners.

In terms of node running costs, in theory, large Ordinal images should be easier to verify than ordinary transactions for each unit of block weight. This is because the images are inscribed in a non-executed part of the Taproot witness. Therefore, there are no signatures to verify, which computationally is perhaps the most significant part of running a node. Ordinal images are also beneficial to scaling in other ways, as the data hungry images take up blockspace which could otherwise be used to increase the UTXO set. Therefore, in general, arbitrary non-transaction related data can be a positive, when looked at purely from the point of view of the resources it takes to validate the blockchain.

However, the key problem with BRC-20 tokens, from a scaling perspective, is they seem to bloat the UTXO set. As a result largely of BRC-20 tokens, the UTXO set has increased from 84 million to 169 million, in the Ordinal period from December 2022 to September 2025. This is an increase of around 85 million outputs. The size of the UTXO set is a key metric for node runners, especially pruned nodes and therefore the existence of BRC-20 tokens is materially detrimental for those operating nodes. Nevertheless, transaction outputs do not benefit from the witness discount and therefore BRC-20 token related transactions have paid a higher rate per byte for this block space. BRC-20 transactions have paid over 5,000 Bitcoin in transaction fees, since the BRC-20 protocol was invented

The results are reasonably inconclusive, however each regression showed a positive relationship between the amount of Ordinal data and verification speed. There is always going to be a lot of randomness when it comes to downloading data on a peer to peer network over the internet, therefore perhaps it’s understandable the results are reasonably weak. Random issues in the disk could also cause variations in speed. One should therefore be somewhat sceptical of these results and we are publishing this in the hope others repeat or improve this experiment.

The above analysis does not imply that large Ordinal related images are a good thing or positive for Bitcoin. These images could have a negative long term effects on the system, as they may price out financial transactions, which could have all kinds of negative consequences. All the data in this report may show is that the large Ordinal images may have a small side benefit, partially offsetting the potential negatives, which is that more arbitrary data on the chain, if done well, might make it slightly easier to run a node in practice.