How Ordinals affected the traffic on the Bitcoin BTC network?
The difficulty level of Bitcoin BTC has reached an all-time high, which means that it has become harder for the miners to mine Bitcoin. According to Mempool- Bitcoin explorer the difficulty level of Bitcoin is 43.55T, which represents a 23% increase on a year-to-date basis.
Key Takeaways
- Bitcoin Ordinals has led to an increase in network traffic.
- Around 22% of the transaction fee was attributed to the Ordinals trading.
The hash rate, a measure of the processing power of the Bitcoin network, has also increased. This happened because the increase in difficulty time caused the miners to use more power to solve complex mathematical problems to mine blocks. Consequently, the hash rate went to 351 EH/s.
However, with the launch of NFT Ordinals in January 2023, the overall traffic on the Bitcoin mainnet has increased.
Impact of Ordinals
Bitcoin Ordinals is nothing ordinary as it has taken over the crypto world at large ever since its launch. It is a new way of inscribing data onto each smallest unit of Bitcoin- Satoshis- for the users. This data may include the creation of NFTs using smart contracts,
Recently the number of Ordinal inscriptions has surged dramatically. It recorded over half a million inscriptions, while a significant portion was minted in March alone. As a result, it also surged the transaction fees paid on the Bitcoin network. While 22% of the fees were attributed to Ordianls trading.
The native NFTs of Bitcoin could potentially boost the network, as it faces regulatory scrutiny.
Raised concerns regarding increased network congestion
Despite the immense traffic, the Ordinals were able to drive to the network. It has raised concerns and disagreements among people in the crypto community. Some people who prefer the traditional Bitcoin system are worried. Because they think the Ordinals project will make the Bitcoin network slower and more expensive to use. As the Network transaction fees has increased.
Their concerns are not entirely true or baseless. Currently, the amount of memory used by the Bitcoin network is higher than it should be. This has caused the network to reject transactions that don’t meet a certain price threshold. Consequently, there are around 30,000 transactions in line to be processed.