Is Bitcoin About to Freeze Its Own Coins? “The Cat” Proposal Divides the Community
A controversial Bitcoin Improvement Proposal, “The Cat,” aims to freeze inscription-related UTXOs to combat blockchain bloat, deeply dividing the community over property rights.Summary
A new, controversial Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) called “The Cat” is dividing the community by proposing to label millions of Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs) associated with Ordinals and Bitcoin Stamps as permanently unspendable (Non-Monetary UTXOs or NMUs).
This proposal targets the significant growth of the UTXO set, which doubled in 2023 largely due to these inscription methods that store data on-chain, bypassing previous limits like OP_RETURN. Advocates argue that freezing these dust outputs, often containing fewer than 1,000 satoshis, will reduce node storage costs and deter future non-monetary bloat.
However, critics, including prominent developers like Greg Maxwell, view this as a dangerous precedent, labeling it “asset seizure” and a violation of Bitcoin’s core principles of censorship resistance. The debate centers on whether the protocol should discriminate between transaction types, with opponents warning that enabling consensus-level freezing could lead to future coin confiscation.
(Source：BeInCrypto)