Prior to 18w06a, smelting cactus into cactus dye gave 0.2 xp per cactus. From 18w06a to 18w14a, cactus was not smeltable at all (see MC-124923).
Since 18w14b however, smelting cactus into cactus dye gives 1 xp per cactus, which is significantly more than before.
This is equivalent to the xp given by smelting gold ore, nether gold ore, diamond ore, and emerald ore. This does not seem like an intended game mechanic, and it makes cactus xp farms very fast.
Also, in Bedrock Edition, cactus dye still only gives 0.2 xp per cactus, indicating that this was an oversight when smelting recipes were introduced.
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18w05a:
18w14b:
20w51a:
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Normally I'd say this is not a bug. However it does indeed seem to be very unbalanced when comparing to all the other xp values from smelting, and also on Bedrock Edition cactus dye only gives 0.2 xp, which makes me believe that this is indeed unintentional. But I don't know for sure.
However, this also has been used for xp farms based on cactus farms connected to furnaces in the past, so it might also be worth keeping the same.
EDIT: I've checked through the history of the smelting wiki article and it seems like originally it was 0.2 xp in Java Edition too (here's the version of the page from 15 August 2012). It seems to have changed in some point in 2018, which coincides with the introduction of smelting recipes.
So yeah, seems like a bug. This was never mentioned in any changelog either, from what I can tell.
violine1101's Minecraft wiki link is incorrect.
It should be:
https://minecraft.wiki/Smelting?limit=500&action=history
@unknown don't use those types of comments. Those comments are restricted to mods & helpers only.