Following the creation of the nonfungible tokens (NFTs) protocol Ordinals in January 2023, weeks later, Bitcoin’s average block size has hit an all-time high of 2.5MB since its creation.
According to statistics from Blockchain.com, the size of a Bitcoin block increased significantly starting in February 2023 and reached over 2MB in the weeks after the Ordinals Protocol’s release.
As previously reported, processing transactions of Ordinals, also known as Bitcoin-based nonfungible tokens, has already brought in more than $600,000 for players in the Bitcoin mining ecosystem.
The Ordinals protocol was introduced by software developer Casey Rodarmor in January, enabling the network to create “digital artifacts” for Bitcoin. These may include video and audio files, PDFs, and JPEG photos.
These digital artifacts may be inscribed to each of the individual Satoshis that make up a single Bitcoin, as Rodarmor explains in the Ordinals documentation. There are 100,000,000 Satoshis in one BTC.
“Individual satoshis can be inscribed with arbitrary content, creating unique Bitcoin-native digital artifacts that can be held in Bitcoin wallets and transferred using Bitcoin transactions. Inscriptions are as durable, immutable, secure, and decentralized as Bitcoin itself.”
The potential to add digital objects to the blockchain has caused controversy within the Bitcoin community, with both pro and con arguments offering plenty of fuel for discussion.
The expanding utilization of block space to inscribe different Ordinals has been one of these key debate issues.
From July 2021 to February 2023, the average block size for Bitcoin varied between 0.7MB and 1.5MB. The average block size for Bitcoin topped 2MB for the first time starting on February 5 and is presently hovering around 2.2MB as of this writing.
According to statistics from Glassnode, the network has reached a record 44 million non-zero addresses since the launch of Bitcoin Ordinals. According to the most recent Glassnode newsletter, Ordinals compete for block space demand but have not yet had a big influence on network pricing.
As a “new and unique time in Bitcoin history,” according to Glassnode, the introduction of Ordinals stimulates network activity without the “traditional transfer of currency volume for monetary goals.”
