Bitcoin Block Space Experiences Surge in Ordinal Inscriptions, Miners Confront Potential Income Challenges

The network is experiencing a notable increase in ordinal inscriptions, mainly as text files attributed to the BRC-20 token standard, according to a report from data analytics firm Glassnode released on Thursday. These inscriptions are taking up more space in Bitcoin’s blocks through the Segwit data structure and Taproot, contributing to a significant growth in the Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) set.

Despite this trend, monetary transactions continue to dominate the content of each block. The rise in inscriptions has led to over 550,000 daily transactions, increasing the average number of transactions per block to around 3,500. However, these changes have not had a major impact on miners’ revenue.

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty has surged by 50%, and with the anticipated halving event approaching in just 206 days, miners may be under financial pressure. The income per hash rate is nearing historic lows, while network fees have doubled to about 38 BTC daily.

This article was generated with the assistance of AI and has been reviewed by an editor.