The Bitcoin network has undergone significant updates in recent months that have enabled it to accommodate BRC-20 tokens, making it similar to Ethereum but with less efficiency and speed. Additionally, Ordinal images similar to NFTs on Ethereum have been created.
Now, after a period of using these technologies, a question emerges within the crypto community:
Have BRC-20 tokens and Ordinal images contributed to improving and speeding up the Bitcoin network, or the opposite?
To answer this question, we refer to a recent report from 'BitMEX Research' which explicitly highlighted the technical impact of BRC-20 tokens and Ordinal images on the verification process in Bitcoin contracts.
This report comes at a time when the network is experiencing increased congestion due to unconventional uses of the Bitcoin network.
According to data, BRC-20 tokens are more burdensome on contracts compared to Ordinal images, despite their similar consumption of storage space.
The number of BRC-20 transactions reached about 92.5 million transactions, compared to only 2.7 million for images, yet both types consumed around 30 gigabytes.
However, BRC-20 transactions cause greater pressure on the network's infrastructure, specifically by expanding the UTXO set, which doubled in size from 84 million to 169 million between December 2022 and September 2025, posing a challenge for node operators.
On the other hand, Ordinal images with dense data show different technical behavior; they are stored in a non-volatile part of the main root witness, without the need to verify signatures, which makes their verification relatively faster.
They also do not add to the UTXO set, which limits their long-term impact on network performance.
Tests from 'BitMEX' indicated that blocks containing large amounts of random data like Ordinal images could accelerate the verification process by up to 11%, due to lower computational requirements compared to traditional transactions.
However, the same report warned against rushing to interpret these results as a positive indicator, as dense data Ordinal images hinder the available block capacity for basic financial transactions, which may undermine the original purpose of the Bitcoin network.
Another study by 'Glassnode' supported this view, confirming that Ordinal tokens and BRC-20 do not compete with traditional transactions, but rather add more data and fees, which reflects on miner revenues without directly affecting the activity of regular users.
Nevertheless, BitMEX emphasized that the current results are not definitive, given the impact of external factors such as connection speed and device differences.
It was also recommended to conduct broader tests to determine whether the temporary benefits in contract performance are worth the structural costs that these uses may impose in the long term.
