The US National Vulnerability Database (NVD) has announced that a vulnerability has been discovered in the Bitcoin Core code related to the use of BRC-20 tokens, which leads to an overload of the blockchain of the first cryptocurrency.

According to the official report, some versions of Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots allow BRC-20 tokens to bypass restrictions on the size of additional information in the "inscriptions". Using the Ordinals protocol, these tokens can mask data, making it look like code. One of the code developers has previously pointed out this potential risk.

The inclusion of this vulnerability in the NVD list highlights its importance in the field of cybersecurity, although it is still under analysis at the moment.

The agency also noted that BRC-20 tokens have already led to a serious overload of the Bitcoin network, which negatively affects its performance and increases transaction fees.

BRC-20 is an experimental token standard on the BTC network that uses JSON to "label" satoshi, mint and transfer coins. It became popular after the launch of the Ordinals protocol in early 2023, which added the ability to create non-interchangeable tokens (NFT) in Satoshi.

It was previously reported that the Bitcoin network was overloaded five times, which led to an increase in average transaction fees to the level of $14-$16.

The ORDI token associated with the Ordinals protocol showed a slight decrease of 3% in response to this news. At the time of writing, its price is $47.90 according to CoinGecko. The market capitalization of this asset has exceeded $1 billion over the past few weeks, and its value has increased by 143.6% in 14 days.