Since the end of January you can place non-fungible tokens (NFT) on the Bitcoin (BTC) network. This is leading to a resurgence in network activity, but not everyone is happy about it. Despite this, the number of NFTs on Bitcoin has grown extremely fast and has now reached a significant milestone. Unfortunately, the dark side is now also very noticeable.
Bitcoin is popular for NFTs
The service started at the end of January Ordinals live. This platform allows you to put NFTs on Bitcoin, to the dismay of some bitcoin fans. The platform theoretically makes the blockchain more efficient by using unused space in bitcoin blocks. This makes it easier for miners to fill blocks with transaction data.
This morning around six o’clock the network reached the milestone of 100,000 NFTs, according to data from Dune Analytics. Yesterday the counter was still around 75,000 units. On February 8, just a few weeks after the platform’s public launch, the counter was still at 12,000 NFTs. This has already led to discussion and it is likely that this will happen even more now.
Bitcoin network is busy, miners win
It costs quite a bit to put the network-intensive tokens on the blockchain. Miners have already made nearly $800,000 from NFT transaction fees. Average transaction costs are still creeping up steadily, according to YCharts. They haven’t been this high since December.
The same goes for Mempool Size. The Mempool is the place where all transactions are collected before they are put on the blockchain. This value has been since mid-November not as high as nowindicating that the network is very busy.
The usage can also be seen on Taproot. This layer 2 upgrade already went live at the end of 2021, but growth was very slow at first. The Ordinals NFTs seem to have changed this overnight, Taproot’s share of the network has been reduced in just a few months increased from just 1% to over 11%. When Ordinals went live, activity on Bitcoin increased at an unprecedented rate.