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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 before that block height in the last 12 days. Statistics show that blocks larger than 3MB are now quite common, and demand for Ordinal inscriptions has increased as they passed 65,000 this weekend.
Observers saw history made on February 1, 2023, when Luxor mined the largest block in the Bitcoin blockchain. The record-breaking block (#774,628), which measured 3.96MB, surpassed the previous record set on August 11, 2022, when Antpool discovered block #748,918, which was 2.765MB in size. At the time, there were fewer than 1,000 ordinary inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain, but the trend quickly increased to reach 50,000 inscriptions by Friday. By Sunday afternoon, 12 February, over 66,000 inscriptions had been registered.
As a side effect of the trend of ordinary inscriptions on the Bitcoin blockchain, the fees for sending a BTC transaction have increased. Bitcoin.com News recently reported a sharp 122% spike in Bitcoin network transfer fees one week after Luxor mined the 3.96MB block. On that day, the average fee for a transaction on the Bitcoin network was $1.704, and today it is 0.000079 BTC or $1.74 per transfer. In addition to the rising fees, block sizes have regularly exceeded the 3MB range since the record-setting block #774,628.
Data from Dune Analytics indicates a high number of block sizes exceeding 3 MB after February 5, 2023. Calculations from mempool.space also reflect this trend, as 3 MB block sizes are easily visible by scrolling back over the past 12 days. For example, block height #776,115, mined on Sunday, was about 3.30 MB and contained about 795 transactions. Block height #776,116 was 3,367 MB and contained approximately 912 transactions.
There are many cases of 3MB+ blocks, and our analysis shows that larger blocks confirm a smaller number of transactions. For example, block height 776,218 was about 1.68 MB, but contained 3,385 transactions. As bitcoin miners work to remove unconfirmed transactions in the mempool, statistics from jochen-hoenicke.de and txstreet.com show occasional backups.
What do you think about the continued use of larger block sizes on the Bitcoin blockchain? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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