‘Attack on Bitcoin’ claims circulate as transaction fees rise

The Bitcoin quadrant of Crypto Twitter was filled with concern on Sunday, as some users saw high transaction fees and an overloaded backlog of transactions as an attack on Bitcoin.

There are currently over 469,000 transactions waiting to be confirmed in Bitcoin’s mempool at the time of writing, according to mempool.space. Before transactions are added to Bitcoin’s blockchain, transactions are sent to the network’s mempool, where they wait to be picked by a Bitcoin miner and inserted into Bitcoin’s next block.

Bitcoin transaction fees were also quite high, with high-priority transactions at a rate of 654 sat/vB, or around $26, according to mempool.space.

The two calculations suggested that Bitcoin’s network was particularly congested, but some believed it was the product of malicious behavior, aimed at cutting off those who could not handle the increase in transaction fees.

“High transaction fees are the chosen pain point of the attacker, likely to do […] Bitcoin useless to smaller players,” claimed @proofofjogi on Twitter Sunday. “We’re in the when-they-fight-you stage.”

The notion that high transaction fees could be used as an “attack vector” against Bitcoin was echoed by Bitcoin mag Dylan LeClair. But he argued that raising costs in the short term has a negligible impact on Bitcoin in the long run.

A user on Twitter named @Toma_7_32 pointed out that clogging Bitcoin’s mempool mainly benefits miners, “who are having a blast” while reaping the rewards associated with higher transaction fees, despite what some are calling an “attack” on Bitcoin.

The account claimed that it was only a matter of time before those flooding Bitcoin’s mempool with transactions ran out of money, making any impact on the network short-lived.

Still, others attributed the increase in transaction fees and Bitcoin’s significant lag to Ordinals, a protocol used to mint NFT-like assets on Bitcoin. Called inscriptions, the total number of Bitcoin-based digital assets cruised past 4.3 million on Sunday, according to a Dune dashboard. Just last week, inscriptions a total of 2.5 millionbased on Decrypt coverage.

The recent increase in inscriptions can be attributed growing popularity of BRC-20 tokens, which were originally pioneered as a experiment in March. Some exchanges such as UniSat Wallet have created ways for people to trade these tokens built on top of Bitcoin, which bears a resemblance to ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum.

On Sunday alone, the UniSat Wallet had done over $9.3 million in inscribed trading volume, as of this writing, according to another Dune dashboard. The number coincided with approximately 7,500 transactions.

While chatter around Ordinals and Bitcoin transaction fees intensified on Sunday, Bitcoin was largely flat. The coin was down about 0.1% at around 28,800 at the time of writing, according to CoinGecko.

And while some on Twitter expressed concerns, others like Kashif Raza pushed back on the notion that Bitcoin is under attack, pointing to the fact that Ordinals are an innovation made possible in part by Bitcoins taproot upgrade.

“Developers use it to explore new possibilities that you can’t stop,” he said. “This is what you call a free market.”