by • Luxor mining pool recently mined a record-setting 3.96 MB block (#774,628) on the Bitcoin blockchain, which has caused an increase in demand for Ordinal inscriptions and fees for BTC transactions.
• Blocks larger than 3 MB are now common on the Bitcoin blockchain and there have been over 66,000 inscriptions recorded as of Sunday afternoon on Feb. 12.
• Data from Dune Analytics indicates a high number of block sizes exceeding 3 MB after Feb. 5, 2023 and metrics from mempool.space also reflect this trend.
Record-Setting Block Size on Bitcoin Blockchain
Since Luxor, a bitcoin mining pool, mined a record-setting 3.96 MB block (#774,628) on the Bitcoin blockchain, block sizes have been larger than they were prior to that block height in the past 12 days.
Demand for Ordinal Inscriptions
Statistics show that blocks larger than 3 MB are now quite common, and demand for Ordinal inscriptions has risen as they have surpassed 65,000 this weekend.
Rising Transaction Fees
As a side effect of the ordinal inscriptions trend on the Bitcoin blockchain, fees for sending a BTC transaction have risen. On that day, the average fee for a transaction was $1.704 and today it is 0.000079 BTC or $1.74 per transfer.
Sustained Use of Blocks Larger Than 3 MB Continues
Data from Dune Analytics indicates a high number of block sizes exceeding 3 MB after Feb 5th 2023 and metrics from mempool space also reflect this trend with numerous instances of blocks greater than or equal to size of 3MB being confirmed by miners each day with smaller number of transactions per block compared to other blocks with smaller size..
Conclusion
The use of large blocks is becoming more common as demand increases but this has come at cost with increased transaction fees due to rise in competition among miners to confirm transactions faster while ensuring their rewards remain competitive in order to incentivize them enough to stay in game which ultimately leads higher fees charged by miners from users who want their transactions confirmed quickly .
