The mempool of the first cryptocurrency has not been released since mid-April – it currently has about 393,000 unconfirmed transactions. This was reported by Glassnode analyst James Check.
The #Bitcoin mempool has not cleared since mid April.
This explosion in blockspace demand is actually pretty unique, and this thread is a quick exploration on what is actually going on.
— _Checkɱate 🔑⚡🌋☢️🛢️ (@_Checkmatey_) September 21, 2023
According to the expert, the pressure on online commissions has decreased significantly since May. He noted that blockchain fees are increased for a bear market, but are far from those of a bull market.
At the same time, the volume of transferred bitcoins in dollar equivalent is approaching the annual minimum, Check emphasized.
“So, we have an overloaded mempool, peak activity levels, but low transfer volumes? The reason is Ordinals. Bitcoin inscriptions, especially text messages, currently account for 50% to 60% of confirmed transactions, and this has been the case since mid-April (the mempool has been full since then),” he explained.
On average, Ordinals take up only 10% of the block size in bytes, but bring in about 20% of the commissions.
But, despite the decrease in volumes, 80% of the block is usually always filled with money transfers, Chek noted. This indicates the pressure of the base load indicator (BASELOAD) – the more “inscriptions”, the greater the commission.
Throughout the history of Bitcoin, the average transaction size was between 550 and 600 bytes, but Oridinal appeared in March 2023, and then the figure exceeded 1.4 KB.
“Inscriptions are sensitive to high commissions, but are willing to buy cheap block space. […] From a more philosophical point of view, I really like the fact that people can pay for Bitcoin graffiti,” the expert concluded.
At the end of August, the share of Bitcoin NFT-related transactions on the network reached 85%. Since the launch of the protocol, 34.6 million inscriptions have been created with a total volume of 12.9 GB.
Let us recall that in May, Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dash Jr. proposed introducing a “spam filter” for BRC-20 and Ordinals standard tokens due to their negative impact on the network.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, on the contrary, supported the protocol for launching Bitcoin NFTs, calling its emergence the return of “creator culture” to the blockchain of the first cryptocurrency.
Found an error in the text? Select it and press CTRL+ENTER
ForkLog newsletters: keep your finger on the pulse of the Bitcoin industry!