Ever since Luxor, a bitcoin mining pool, mined a record 3.96 MB block (#774,628) on the Bitcoin blockchain, block sizes have been larger than before that block height in recent years. 12 days. Statistics show that blocks larger than 3MB are now quite common, and demand for ordinal signups has increased, surpassing 65,000 this weekend.
Sustained use of blocks larger than 3MB continues on the Bitcoin blockchain
Observers saw history made on February 1, 2023, when Luxor mined the largest block on the Bitcoin blockchain. The record block (#774,628), of 3.96 MB, surpassed the previous record set on August 11, 2022, when Antpool discovered the block #748,918, which was 2,765 MB in size. At the time, there were fewer than 1,000 ordinal signups on the Bitcoin blockchain, but the trend quickly increased to 50,000 signups on Friday. For the afternoon of Sunday, February 12, more 66,000 registrations had been recorded.
As a side effect of the trend of ordinal registrations on the Bitcoin blockchain, the fees for sending a BTC the transaction has increased. Bitcoin.com News recently reported a sharp 122% increase in Bitcoin network transfer fees a week after Luxor mined the 3.96MB block. On that day, the average fee for a transaction on the Bitcoin network was $1,704, and today it is 0.000079 BTC or $1.74 by transfer. In addition to the rising fees, block sizes have regularly exceeded the 3MB range since record block #774,628.
Data from Dune Analytics indicates a large number of block sizes exceeding 3MB after February 5, 2023. Metrics from mempool.space also reflect this trend, as block sizes of 3MB are easily visible when scrolling back over the last 12 days. For example, the height of the block #776,115, extracted on Sunday, was approximately 3.30 MB and carried approximately 795 transactions. block height #776,116 it was 3,367 MB and had approximately 912 transactions.
There are numerous instances of blocks larger than 3MB, and our analysis shows that larger blocks confirm fewer transactions. For example, block height 776,218 was approximately 1.68 MB but contained 3,385 transactions. While bitcoin miners work to clear the unconfirmed transaction count in the mempool, statistics for jochen-hoenicke.de and txstreet.com show occasional backups.
What do you think about the sustained use of larger block sizes on the Bitcoin blockchain? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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