The recent craze over Ordinals inscriptions has led to clogged networks and spiking transaction fees not just on itcoin">Bitcoin, but across multiple blockchains.
Over the weekend, activity related to creating Ordinals non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) based chains like Avalanche, Arbitrum, and BNB Chain surged dramatically. This drove up gas costs to record levels, with Avalanche seeing over $5.6 million spent on gas for inscriptions on December 16th alone. The increased demand even caused a 78-minute outage on Arbitrum.
Similarly, itcoin">Bitcoin has seen increased inscription activity that has flooded the network with transactions, leading to a large mempool backlog and spiked fees reaching upwards of $37 per transaction. This makes itcoin">Bitcoin much less usable as a payment system. Some argue the high fees will drive the adoption of layer-2 scaling solutions and force beneficial innovations, but the near-term impact is negative.
Amidst the mania, collections like itcoin">Bitcoin Frogs have set new records for 24-hour volume and total market capitalization, surpassing even top historical NFT projects like CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club. Whether current levels are sustainable remains to be seen, but the Ordinals phenomenon continues to have a major congesting impact across networks.
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