Robin, I appreciate the effort to tackle UTXO bloat it’s a legitimate scalability challenge. But the proposed method of expiring or pruning small, aged UTXOs crosses a line I think we should be very cautious about.
Introducing a rule that makes certain UTXOs unspendable based on arbitrary thresholds amounts to a protocol-level confiscation. That’s not a minor technical tweak it fundamentally alters the trust model of Bitcoin. People have always operated under the assumption that if they control the private key, their coins are safe, regardless of how small or old the UTXO is.
This change would undermine that assumption, possibly harming long-term holders, forgotten wallets, and low-income users disproportionately. It also opens the door to future proposals that may seek to invalidate UTXOs under different pretenses.
Instead, we should double down on solutions that preserve Bitcoin’s principles:
- Encourage UTXO consolidation through dynamic fee markets.
- Improve wallet UX to discourage spammy outputs.
- Explore fee policies that penalize dust creation without invalidating it.
Cleaning the UTXO set is important, but not at the cost of breaking the core promise that Bitcoin makes to its users: your coins are yours, no matter how small or how long you’ve held them.