The Bitcoin blockchain has 40.49 gigabytes (GB) to reach half a terabyte (TB), and based on recent Ordinal Inscription trends, getting there faster There is a possibility that the average block size will reach 40.49 gigabytes (GB) by 2023. Average block size reached a high of 2.52 megabytes (MB) on February 12, 2023, but block size has subsided, dropping to an average of 1.634 MB on February 27. Still, the blockchain is growing at a rate of 0.288 GB per day, which compares favorably to the previous rate of 0.173 GB per day recorded before the Ordinal nameplate trend began.
Impact of Ordinal Inscription on Bitcoin Network Metrics
Ordinal inscriptionsbegan on December 16, 2022, but did not really get going until February 2, 2023. That was the day that 3.96 MB blocks were mined, and since then, 214,028 inscriptions have been added to the Bitcoin blockchain.Between February 2 and February 27, or roughly 26 days, Ordinal inscriptions trends have been increasing, with Bitcoin’s average network rates and average block size increased. Both the network fee and block size indices peaked around February 12 and have since subsided. During that time, data shows that the size of the Bitcoin chain grew at a faster rate.
For example, statistics show that the Bitcoin blockchain was459.51 GBin size on February 27, 2023. during the 26 days, the blockchain grew 7.77 GB, or about 0.288 GB per day The metrics show that the number of blocks increased by 7.77 GB, or about 0.288 GB per day. This spike can be visually confirmed by looking at the Bitcoin blockchain size chart from February 2 to today. However, before Ordinal Inscription became the trend and larger blocks were regularly mined, blockchain growth was much slower: from December 19, 2022 to February 2, 2023, it took 45 days to reach 7.77 GB.
At that time, over the span of 45 days, the bitcoin blockchain grew at a rate of 0.173 GB per day.Theaverage feefor bitcoin on February 28, 2023 was 0.000077BTC. 33} The median feeis 0.000033, which is BTCand is $0.777 per transaction. Transactions have also been seen at rates ranging from 2 satoshis ($0.07) per byte to 19 satoshis ($0.62) per byte.In the Ordinal inscription trendminers earned $28.21 million per day on February 16, 2023, compared to $21.36 million today ( block subsidies plus fees) peaked. Still, bitcoin (BTCminers earned more than on December 24, 2022.
It will be interesting to see how another month of Ordinal inscriptions affects metrics such as average block size, median and average fees, and overall growth of the bitcoin blockchain. While the hype around Ordinal inscriptions has subsided, these indicators are still high compared to prior to the influx of inscriptions on February 2 and beyond. Average and median fees are still higher than before the Ordinal trend, and average block size remains above 1.60.
