UTXO set/chainset size increases rapidly since 4/2023?

[jnano]

Since 4/2023 the chainset/UTXO set size started to increase much more rapidly than all years before.
What's going on?

While the exact size varies between node instances, here's one node as reference. From a peak of a 34% increase between 2019-2020, and an average of 15% per year between 2019 and 2023, the year that ended now saw a size increase of 100%, and a big rate increase since the last week of April or so:


There's no corresponding increase in blockchain size:


While the rate of increase in blockchain size did change since 2/2023 (not sure why, Ordinals?), due to an apparent increase in average block size from maybe 1.2MB to 1.7MB, it's nowhere near the change in UTXO set size. Also the start date is misaligned.

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[Kruw]

While the rate of increase in blockchain size did change since 2/2023 (not sure why, Ordinals?), due to an apparent increase in average block size from maybe 1.2MB to 1.7MB, it's nowhere near the change in UTXO set size.

This is due to inscriptions like BRC-20.  Notice how many (worthless) outputs are created as children of this transaction: https://mempool.space/tx/b97c394bb385792f002fd52238fcdfc2513582a45b67ff4639c0c5e4aa844bb2

[pooya87]

I warned about the severity of the attack under the codename Ordinals increasing more than 7 months ago:

This will only get worse as the scam grows ....

The full nodes will also start being put under pressure as the spam will increase cost of running a full node for many reasons. From the increased traffic putting high pressure on their mempool and transaction relays to their chainstate (UTXO database) growing with a lot of dust outputs that can not be spent but they have to load in their memory for transaction processing.



https://statoshi.info/d/000000009/unspent-transaction-output-set?orgId=1&from=1682080884686&to=1683521607397

Both of the above charts show a very fast slope of how this attack is growing in size and severity.

Considering the little to no effort that is being put into fixing the exploit these attackers are using, the situation has not improved so the rate of the spam is still high and unchanged as it can be seen from the slope in the updated chart below:


https://statoshi.info/d/000000009/unspent-transaction-output-set?orgId=1&from=1682080884000&to=1704344007000

[ABCbits]

Yes, it's caused by Ordinals (mainly BRC-20 which depends on Ordinals). I've observed this problem back on June 2023.

If the trends (~1.8 MB average block size after Ordinal popularity) continues compared with past trend (~1.2 MB average block size), i would say far longer if we project in next 10 years. In terms of size there would be ~307GB difference (see calculation below).

Code:

0.6 MB * 144 blocks (total blocks mined per day) * 365 (days) * 10 (years) = 315360 MB (~307 GB)

With BRC-20 (and similar protocol), the worst part isn't storage but rather UTXO growth. In last 2 months, total UTXO is increased by about 15 millions.


Source: https://www.statoshi.info/d/000000009/unspent-transaction-output-set?orgId=1&refresh=10m&viewPanel=6&from=now-1y&to=now

This trend still on-going and already slow down IBD process for device with 8GB RAM (such as Raspberry Pi 4 8GB) or less.

[Kruw]

Considering the little to no effort that is being put into fixing the exploit these attackers are using, the situation has not improved so the rate of the spam is still high and unchanged as it can be seen from the slope in the updated chart below:

There's no "exploit" and it's not an "attack".  These transactions are valid and pay fees to miners which secure the network.

[jnano]

Thanks.

Is there someplace to see per-block stats, like how many transactions/outputs are Inscriptions, or the percentage of block data?

Did BRC-20 and "general" Inscriptions both become possible from day one, once the feature was introduced?

FWIW, these seem to be the number of Inscriptions per month:
2022/12 3
2023/01 445
2023/02 218K
2023/03 444K
2023/04 2.03M (the pace picked up more on 4/22)
2023/05 7.66M
2023/06 3.99M
2023/07 6.45M
2023/08 6.83M
2023/09 7.28M
2023/10 1.81M
2023/11 8.34M
2023/12 7.64M

BTW, these things are ridiculous.