The sudden rise of Bitcoin (BTC) transaction fees and unconfirmed transactions raised concerns on Crypto Twitter over the weekend about a possible Denial of Service (DoS) “attack”.
Some Bitcoin analysts and commentators were quick to dispel these concerns of their followers.
Average bitcoin transaction fees are currently $19.20 or 0.00068 BTC, according to to BitInfoCharts. Meanwhile, according to Mempool Space, there are currently 459,341 pending transactions.
Increased demand on the network even caused total block fees to temporarily exceed the block grant reward of 6.25 BTC on May 7th.
BITCOIN TRANSACTION FEES EXCEED COINBASE BLOCK GRANT REWARD
6.76 BTC vs 6.25 BTC
FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2017 pic.twitter.com/F0PKrlFYmQ
– trevor.btc @ NYC (@TO) May 7, 2023
The proof-of-work mining process has a set block grant of 6.25 BTC, which is halved every four years. However, in rare cases where demand for space is blocked, this number may be exceeded, resulting in higher transaction fees.
Industry analysts said this was the first time since 2017. One block saw fees of 6.76 BTC and block 788695 generated fees of 6.7 BTC.
Mempool space researcher shows that activity has cooled off a bit since then and fees have fallen below the block reward again. The next block is expected to be processed generating 4.51 BTC in fees.
The increase in activity and the demand for block space was attributed to the increase Ordinal inscriptions. According to analytics service provider Glassnode, a total of 75% of on-chain Bitcoin transactions used Taproot on May 7, leading to an all-time high.
Some on Crypto Twitter however he speculated that the recent congestion was the result of a DoS (denial of service) attack on the Bitcoin network.
Related: Binance Closes BTC Withdrawals When Bitcoin Network Congests
Bitcoin analysts were quick to point out that this was due to demand rather than a premeditated attack. “0xfoobar,” he said his 130,000 followers:
“Bitcoin mempool has finally started to be used and the maxi are calling it a DoS attack on the network. They didn’t really consider even the most basic scenarios like “Bitcoin is becoming popular and people are willing to pay to use it””
On May 8, the world’s largest crypto exchange Binance suspended Bitcoin transactions again, citing a “large backlog of transactions.” It is the second time Binance has suspended BTC transactions in the last twelve hours.
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