Panic broke out last week when the Bitcoin (BTC) network was faced with sky-high transaction costs and a remarkably large number of unconfirmed transactions. Namely, the Ordinals NFTs and BRC-20 tokens generated a high number of transactions. Ethereum (ETH) also saw another sharp increase in costs. It seems that this has caused many users to move to Solana (SOL).
Bitcoin and Ethereum difficulties
The problems slowly crept in at Bitcoin. The Ordinals service has been open since February, but the Bitcoin network made headlines last Monday when the number of unconfirmed transactions and transaction fees shot through the roof.
The particularly high network activity came from Ordinals NFTs and BRC-20 tokens. Binance even chose to temporarily freeze all recordings to help the network, and the massive activity was rumored to be an attack.
Something similar happened on Ethereum last week. Transactions were processed, but not put on the blockchain for confirmation. Thankfully, the issues only lasted for 25 minutes, and developers quickly released updates to fix the issue. Still, the problems caused a lot of criticism against both networks.
Solana benefits from BTC and ETH problems
According to data from The Block Solana has experienced considerable growth in the meantime. Last Monday, the seven-day average of new addresses shot through 300,000 units. This number has not been seen since June 2022, and it represents almost a threefold increase from the beginning of April.
It is striking that the growth happened at the same time as the difficulties of Bitcoin and Ethereum. It’s no secret that Solana herself has had her fair share of problems. Earlier this year, the Solana blockchain produced several transaction histories, prompting developers to temporarily freeze transactions so as not to exacerbate the problems.
The Block analyst Rebecca Stevens explains that the troubles in both Bitcoin and Ethereum put some of the difficulties faced by the Solana network into perspective.