An analysis of Bitcoin OPᵣETURN metadata

الأصل · EN

The Bitcoin protocol allows to save arbitrary data on the blockchain through a special instruction of the scripting language, called OPᵣETURN. A growing number of protocols exploit this feature to extend the range of applications of the Bitcoin blockchain beyond transfer of currency. A point of debate in the Bitcoin community is whether loading data through OPᵣETURN can negatively affect the performance of the Bitcoin network with respect to its primary goal. This paper is an empirical study of the usage of OPᵣETURN over the years. We identify several protocols based on OPᵣETURN, which we classify by their application domain. We measure the evolution in time of the usage of each protocol, the distribution of OPᵣETURN transactions by application domain, and their space consumption.