Bitcoin Network Activity Surges After Ordinals

Blockchain data from Glassnode shows that Bitcoin’s network activity has seen its first spike for non-monetary reasons in 14 years.

The emergence of Ordinals has led to a non-trivial expansion in the demand for blockspace, said Glassnode in a Feb. 13 newsletter.

Ordinals is a project that aims to bring NFTs to the Bitcoin blockchain. The project has seen immense popularity since its launch at the end of January, with more than 80,500 inscriptions created to date, according to data from Dune.

Inscriptions are created by inscribing sats (the smallest unit of Bitcoin) with content using ord, without the need for a separate token or sidechain, explained a blog from Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor, a former Bitcoin Core contributor.

Now that Ordinals are competing for blockspace, the average fee on the Bitcoin network has seen a significant amount of upward pressure. This is good news for Bitcoin miners that have fallen on hard times of late. Data from Dune shows that miners raked in $92,000 worth of fees from Ordinal transactions alone.

Overall, the amount of network activity has vastly increased since Bitcoin NFTs became a thing. According to Glassnode, the number of non-zero Bitcoin addresses hit an all-time high of 44.06 million addresses.

“The primary source of this activity is due to Ordinals, which instead of carrying a large payload of coin volume, is instead carrying a larger payload of data and new active users,” said the analysts.

However, not everyone is in favor of this new use case for the Bitcoin blockchain. Some Bitcoin advocates believe that the use of blockspace for this purpose will be more detrimental to the network, than good, in the long term.

• SEO Powered Content & PR Distribution. Get Amplified Today.
• Platoblockchain. Web3 Metaverse Intelligence. Knowledge Amplified. Access Here.
• Source: https://unchainedpodcast.com/bitcoin-network-activity-surges-after-ordinals/