A census by blockchain data company Bitquery reveals that 96,231 fake-address text outputs are clogging Bitcoin's unspent transaction output (UTXO) database. Unlike standard OP_RETURN data, which nodes can discard from active memory, these fake-address outputs look spendable and permanently burden node state. The study shows these outputs hold roughly 3.2 BTC in unspendable funds, highlighting the differing node costs of text-embedding methods.
Bitquery Bitcoin text-embedding census
▪Bitquery's census identified 13,062 OP_RETURN taunt transactions and 96,231 fake-address text outputs across Bitcoin's scanned history.
▪Bitquery classified 4,412,782 OP_RETURN outputs as readable text across the scanned history of the Bitcoin blockchain.
▪A census published by blockchain data company Bitquery on September 2, 2026, analyzed text-embedding methods across 965,135 Bitcoin blocks.
OP_RETURN versus fake-address costs
▪Bitcoin nodes do not need to retain OP_RETURN outputs in the unspent transaction output database, though the data remains in block history.
▪Fake-address text embeds readable bytes where an address hash belongs, creating outputs that appear spendable to nodes but have no known private key.
Luke Dashjr taunt campaign
▪A text-embedding campaign from March 21 to March 26, 2026, targeted Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr with a two-sentence taunt.
▪The March 2026 Luke Dashjr taunt campaign comprised 13,062 transactions from 13,062 sending addresses across 579 blocks, paying 0.1014 BTC in aggregate fees.
Bitcoin Core 30.0 relay
▪Bitcoin Core 30.0, released in October 2025, raised the default -datacarriersize setting to 100,000 and allowed multiple OP_RETURN outputs under an aggregate limit.
▪Bitcoin messages longer than 80 bytes rose from a few dozen monthly before Bitcoin Core 30.0 to thousands by February 2026.
UTXO set bloat
▪Fake-address text outputs persist as current node state in the unspent transaction output database unless they are spent, causing database bloat.
▪Bitquery identified 96,231 fake-address outputs across 3,286 transactions, holding approximately 3.2 BTC that is effectively unspendable.
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