One Twitter user claims that Bitcoin's popularity and people's willingness to pay for its use were the real reasons behind the congestion.
A wave of concern swept through Crypto Twitter as a sudden surge in Bitcoin (BTC) transaction fees and unconfirmed transactions triggered fears of a possible Denial of Service (DoS) attack.
However, soon after Crypto Twitter started buzzing with worries, several Bitcoin experts have been swift in dispelling these concerns.
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According to BitInfoCharts, at the time of writing, average transaction fees for Bitcoin stand at $19.20 or 0.00069 BTC. On May 7th, the heightened network demand led to total fees per block temporarily surpassing the block subsidy reward of 6.25 BTC.
The proof-of-work mining process has a fixed block subsidy of 6.25 BTC, which halves every four years. Yet, in rare cases of surging block space demand, this number can be exceeded, resulting in higher transaction fees. This is the first occurrence since 2017, with fees of 6.76 BTC and 6.7 BTC recorded for individual blocks.
Mempool Space's explorer indicates that activity has somewhat subsided, and fees have dipped below the block reward.
The increase in Ordinals inscriptions has been linked to the growing activity and block space demand. Glassnode, an analytics provider, reported that on May 7th, 75% of Bitcoin on-chain transactions used Taproot, reaching a record high.
However, some Crypto Twitter users suspected that the recent congestion was a result of a DoS attack on the Bitcoin network.
Bitcoin analysts quickly clarified that the issue was due to demand rather than a planned attack. User "0xfoobar" claimed that Bitcoin's popularity and people's willingness to pay for its use were the real reasons behind the congestion.
Bitcoin mempool finally gets some usage and the maxis are framing it as a DoS attack on the network. They really have not considered even the most basic scenarios, like ‘Bitcoin becomes popular and people are willing to pay to use it.
On May 8th, Binance, Binance temporarily halted Bitcoin transactions, citing the high volume of pending transactions. This marks the second time Binance suspended BTC transactions within a twelve-hour window.
