Visualizing the Bitcoin's OP_RETURN operator

Abstract

Bitcoin is undoubtedly the most used distributed ledger technology nowadays. Bitcoin's OP_RETURN operator allows for saving arbitrary data on the blockchain. This comes as an extension of Bitcoin's core usage (i.e. cryptocurrency) and opens up a multitude of use cases. These range from benign applications (e.g. ownership of a digital/physical asset) to illegal/malicious scenarios (e.g. blockchain-based botnets). In this paper, we present a system that provides advanced analytic and visual capabilities with regard to the OP_RETURN operator. Furthermore, we showcase a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the OP_RETURN along with a number of interesting findings.