Diving into Data Analytics in Crypto

Been messing with raw data for a few months now after setting up a node. Built a relational database but it’s massive, almost 4TB. Trying to slim it down to focus on the important stuff for better analysis... kinda overwhelming.

Dust limit in Bitcoin Core is 546 satoshis now, right? Used to be 5460, though the math behind it is more convoluted. I’d guess most of those tiny UTXOs are from Ordinals, since they’ve been flooding the chain lately.

You should check out when those UTXOs were created. If you see spikes when Ordinals started hitting the network, it could be a clear link. Also, some wallets create unnecessary dust when they don’t support coin control.

Need to look more into Ordinals for sure. Found around 140 million UTXOs that are OP_RETURN with zero value but still marked unspent. Just placeholders for comments or what? Most are nulldata type... should I separate them in my tables?

True, but don’t forget there’s also the old dust from Dusting Attacks. They aim to deanonymize recipients by giving them tiny amounts, hoping they mix funds with other addresses. Analyzing odd scripts and signatures could uncover some interesting patterns.

Have you thought about using analytics tools like Statoshi? Could spark some ideas on what to get into next.

Good point. But just remember, OP_RETURN is just arbitrary data to the Bitcoin protocol itself. Outside of it, platforms like Tether interpret that data however they want.

Exactly. OP_RETURN removes transactions with data from the UTXO set, making them unspendable. Runes protocol uses it to hold small amounts of token data for easy transfers.

Just did a total check on all unspent UTXOs and the number was over 20 million... which is weird since the actual supply in circulation is around 19.82 million. Maybe my script isn’t catching some of those unspent ones?

OP_RETURN doesn’t make them unspendable by removing them, but through how it’s defined in the protocol. Bitcoin Core just prefers to skip certain scripts with OP_RETURN, not all of them.