The OP_RETURN observer: Will we witness a new spam wave?

[Wind_FURY]

What's "quite possible" is that the majority of those people will never return to crypto.

--SNIP--

Make no mistake, if nothing is done about it, there WILL BE MORE SPAM.

- Removed you from the ignore list to say,

THEN there will be the fee market to make those transactions you don't like NOT sustainable for the long-term.

- Back to the ignore list.

 

[PepeLapiu]

THEN there will be the fee market to make those transactions you don't like NOT sustainable for the long-term.

This is a lie and you know it.
Please do tell us, by what magical mechanism will the higher fees only chase away for profit spammers, but not monetary users? Is there some magic smoke in the miner fees that only affect for profit spammers, and not monetary users?

This is as stupid as claiming that raising the price of cars would save lives because speeders will be priced out of the market. And somehow the higher car price will only discourage speeders but nobody else.

Furthermore, at least for the case of ordinals, the effect is completely reversed. The average ordinal spammer will get a 75% Segwit discount while monetary users on average will get below 50% discount. That is to say, spammers are paying half as much miner fees as monetary users.

If spammers pay less than monetary users, who are the fees really filtering?

[d5000]

Update for May and part of June.



There has been again a growth of small OP_RETURN transactions. Big OP_RETURNs were stagnant. There were 3.4 million inscriptions OP_RETURN transactions, of those only about 43,500 were larger than 83 bytes.

As expected a lot of these transactions are Runes:



In late April there was a a small peak of 84,000 >83 kB OP_RETURN transactions in a week. However, that was not even close to the record since the introduction of Ordinals, that was still a single week in July 2025 with around 150,000 transactions of this size.

Ordinals seem to be completely dying:  


Source: https://dune.com/queries/2181569/3574142

1.4 MB of Ordinals in a complete week is literally nothing. In most of 2024-2025, 10-40 MB were common, with peaks up to 80MB in 2023 and 2025. The average size was 425 bytes, which is typical for BRC-20, not for image inscriptions.

Conclusion:

- Ordinals are probably at the end of their relevant life.
- BRC-20 still exists but is dying too.
- Runes have a little surge, but it's still significantly less than the Runes boom in 2024.

[nutildah]

We are in the middle of a bear market. Your conclusion is that less malware during a bear market means malware is dying? According to your logic, Bitcoin must be dying too.

A lot of maximalists across the board don't attempt to factor in shitcoin market dynamics when it comes to Ordinals and Runes. Meaning, none of it was built to last. It was built to capitalize on the hype of "building on the gold standard for blockchains".

Now the hype is gone, and its not coming back. Why? Because you have thousands of Ordinals and Runes bagholders ready to sell into any pump, and now almost every orifice of "abusing" Bitcoin as a data storage center has been thoroughly explored and mined of retail optimism.

But here is a less tone death set of numbers

I thought maybe you were an AI parody of the other Pepe guy, but this proves you're not.

about malware on Bitcoin as of Jun 22:

This is why nobody will take you seriously, here or anywhere. Calling all the transactions you don't like mALwaRe is a ridiculous misrepresentation of what they actually are.

edit: if you are a parody account, bravo, job well done

[Cookdata]

This is why nobody will take you seriously, here or anywhere. Calling all the transactions you don't like mALwaRe is a ridiculous misrepresentation of what they actually are.

Here is what Satoshi had to say when the idea of Lady Gaga videos on the chain was floated around.

Satoshi about malware: "That's one of the reasons for transaction fees.  There are other things we can do if necessary."

nutildah about malware: "You just don't like Lady Gaga"

Spam is pretty much just a nuisance, and annoyance. Malware is something that could actually destroy bitcoin. Your junk data on chain, if allowed to continue, could destroy bitcoin by a death of a 1000 cuts. Malware is the appropriate term here.

But "transactions I don't like" is attempting to reduce the problem down to me not liking a specific jpeg. It's absurd. I suppose you would call me racist for not responding to the Nigerian prince email?

You think Satoshi will be running around to prove why nodes should have policy rules and not let people use the network just because some minority think there shouldn't be arbitrary data on the chain? You are funny.

I have no idea why you keep saying lady gaga video, seems you are very obsessed with her. If I ever see one of her videos as NSFW on the network, you will be the first person that will come to my mind, I will think you did it because that's what your fellow retards are doing recently, trying to be relevant by pushing useless arbitrary data on the network but it changes nothing, it will fade away in 45 days.

I will assumed you are ignorant and knows nothing about Bitcoin arbitrary data as malware. You can't compile malware on a Bitcoin transaction, even if you do, it's going to be there as byte and nothing serious. I doubt if you know how malware even work to bring this kind of useless argument.