Out of the Ordinal-ry: Bitcoin average block size hits all-time high

Bitcoin’s average block size has hit all-time highs above 2.5MB for the first time since its inception in 2009, driven by the launch of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) protocol Ordinals in January 2023.

Block size data from Blockchain.com reflects a jump in Bitcoin block size from the beginning of February 2023, increasing over 2MB in the weeks following the launch of the Ordinals Protocol.

The average block size over the past 24 hours in megabytes: Source: Blockchain.com

As Cointelegraph previously reported, participants from the Bitcoin mining ecosystem have already made over $600,000 processing transactions of Ordinals, which have been dubbed as Bitcoin-based nonfungible tokens.

Related: Bitcoin hits record 44M non-zero addresses, thanks to Ordinals: Glassnode

Software engineer Casey Rodarmor launched the Ordinals protocol in January, allowing the creation of Bitcoin ‘digital artifacts’ on the network. These can comprise of JPEG images, PDFS and video and audio files.

As Rodarmor outlines in the Ordinals documentation, these digital artifacts can be inscribed to an individual Satoshi that makes up a whole Bitcoin. Each BTC is made up of 100,000,000 Satoshis.

“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 Bitcoin community has been divided over the ability to inscribe digital artifacts to the blockchain, with arguments for and against providing plenty of food for thought. One of these major talking points has been the increased use of block space to inscribe various Ordinals.

Bitcoin’s average block size has hovered between 0.7MB and 1.5MB from July 2021 up until February 2023. From Feb.5 onward, Bitcoin’s average block size surpassed 2MB for the first time and currently sits at around 2.2MB at the time of writing.

The inceptions of Bitcoin Ordinals has also seen the network hit a record 44 million non-zero addresses, as per data from Glassnode. Glassnode's latest newsletter notes that Ordinals compete for block space demand but have not yet significantly impacted network fees.

Glassnode describes the advent of Ordinals as a "new and unique moment in Bitcoin history," whereby innovation generates network activity without the "classical transfer of coin volume for monetary purposes."

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