Since February, there has been a continuation of network congestion. However, it was over 72 hours that the decrease occurred. The network’s mempool is now at its lowest level of waiting transactions following a series of weeks of Bitcoin congestion due to the arrival of Ordinals Network Determinants. This is based on Mempool data. space, in three days, the temporary reduction in the use of Bitcoin’s memory has decreased by 80%.
At the beginning of the last week, the use of the memory pool was equivalent to 400 MB, this value declined to 80 MB, equivalent to just over 20 blocks or 12,000 waiting transactions. In fact, at the peak of network congestion, more than 70,000 waiting transactions accumulated 1,000 MB of temporary Bitcoin memory, as reported by CryptoNews. This is a 92% reduction from its highest level of any year.
Behind all this Bitcoin transactional movement are Ordinals NFTs, which burst onto the scene earlier this year and their growing popularity literally flooded the network with large transactions. In fact, last week Bitcoin was already registering over a million Ordinals registrations in just 4 months.
Images, video, audio, or text (among other content formats) registered with this method in the Bitcoin blockchain, are recorded in a part of a transaction known as a token, where the Bitcoin blockchain is stored and signature information, too.
Some of these NFTs can take up an entire block of transactions, typically storing between 2,000 and 3,000 bitcoin transactions. Because of their size, transactions containing NFTs also tend to pay more commissions to miners, who typically favor higher-paying transactions. As a result, regular transactions (those that pay a fee of 2 or 3 sats/vB) are relegated to bitcoin memory for a variable period of time.
Decrease in the Number of Bitcoin Ordinals Registrations
The reduction in the size of mempool seems to be related to the decrease in the number of ordered lists in Bitcoin. According to data from Dune, over the past week, the number of registrations has dropped sharply, from an average of 30,000 per day to 8,000 today.
During peak activity in early April, between 40,000 and 75,000 NFTs are recorded daily. This coincides with the peak of network congestion.
The Consequences for Bitcoin Users and Miners
The decrease in mempool size positively affects network users, who after several weeks see a reduction in commission rates for transactions that are validated in the first block. According to Mempool.space commission rate for transactions decreased. The commission rate for transactions decreased to levels seen throughout last year.
This decline in commission payments has not been seen since before the emergence of Ordinals and has effects on the reward Bitcoin miners receive as well. In fact, according to Braiins data, commissions per block decreased from 0.2 BTC on April 15 to 0.12 BTC on April 17.
The correction in the price of bitcoin that the market experienced between April 16 and 17 also influenced a decrease in the earnings of miners, who received USD 30 million on April 16 and only USD 23.9 million a day later.
By Marina Meza
