Bitcoin suddenly soars, Transaction fees and unconfirmed transactions sparked concerns on crypto Twitter over the weekend about a potential denial-of-service (DoS) "attack" on the network.
Some Bitcoin analysts and commentators were quick to dismiss these concerns from their respective followers.
According to BitInfoCharts, the average Bitcoin transaction fee is currently $19.20, or 0.00068 BTC. Meanwhile, the backlog stands at 459,341 transactions at the time of writing, according to Mempool Space.
The increase in network demand even caused the total fee per block to temporarily exceed the block subsidy reward of 6.25 BTC on May 7. The proof-of-work mining process has a fixed block subsidy of 6.25 BTC, which is halved every four years. However, in rare cases where demand for block space spikes, this number may be exceeded, resulting in higher transaction fees.
Industry analysts report that this is the first time this has happened since 2017. A fee of 6.76 BTC was recorded for a block, while block 788695 generated a fee of 6.7 BTC. Mempool Space Explorer shows that activity has cooled since then, with fees falling back below the block reward again. The next block is expected to generate a fee of 4.51 BTC. The surge in activity and block space demand is attributed to the increase in ordinal inscriptions. According to analytics provider Glassnode, a total of 75% of Bitcoin's on-chain transactions used Taproot on May 7, an all-time high. However, some on Crypto Twitter speculated that the recent congestion was caused by a DoS (Denial of Service) attack on the Bitcoin network.
Bitcoin analysts were quick to point out that this was due to demand rather than a premeditated attack. “0xfoobar” told his 130,000 followers: “Bitcoin mempool is finally getting some use, and maxis characterizes it as a DoS attack on the network. They really don't even consider the most basic scenarios like 'Bitcoin catches on and people are willing to pay to use it'” On May 8, Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, once again suspended Bitcoin trading, citing “a large number of pending transactions.” This is the second time Binance has suspended BTC trading in the past 12 hours.
