Over the weekend, the typical transaction fee on the Bitcoin network reached its all-time peak of $40, and in some places even reached the $50 mark.
In particular, on December 17, for high-priority transactions, users spent 674 satoshi per virtual byte (sat/vB) – $40.05. And the day before, the value of some transactions exceeded $50.
As of December 18, the fee for high-priority transactions has dropped to 231 satoshi per virtual byte (sat/vB) - $13.29.
Co-founder of Stack Muneb Ali commented on the situation on his page on the social network X:
“The commission on the Bitcoin network today (Saturday, December 16 – Ed.) exceeded 600 sat/vB. That’s an increase of 600 times a year.”
In his opinion, in the current situation, one should think about the development of second-level solutions, such as the Lighting Network.
WHY DO COMMISSIONS RISE?
One of the main reasons for the increase in fees is the limited block size in the Bitcoin blockchain, which is only 1 MB. This limitation leads to competition between users when including their transactions in a block, mainly during periods of high network load. When many users send transactions at the same time, they face the need to increase fees in order for their transactions to be selected by miners for inclusion in the next block.
Moreover, the increasing popularity and value of Bitcoin leads to an increase in the number of transactions, which further increases this competition and contributes to an increase in the average size of commissions.
INFLUENCE OF ORDINALS RECORDINGS
The active use of Ordinals records also led to the overload of the Bitcoin network in 2023. The protocol's impact on network performance has drawn attention to its role in Bitcoin transaction dynamics. As a result, some Bitcoiners advocated radical methods of combating Ordinals.
Additionally, in the US, the National Vulnerability Database (NVT) recently added a cybersecurity risk to the registry, prompting the creation of the Ordinals protocol in 2022.
