A sudden surge in Bitcoin (BTC) transaction fees and unconfirmed transactions raised concerns of a potential Denial of Service (DoS) attack on the network among Crypto Twitter users over the weekend. However, some Bitcoin analysts and commentators were quick to dismiss these fears.
BitInfoCharts currently reports that Bitcoin’s average transaction fees are $19.20, or 0.00068 BTC. At the same time, the backlog of transactions reportedly stood at 459,341 according to Mempool Space.
Due to the increased demand on the network, total fees per block have briefly exceeded the block subsidy reward of 6.25 BTC on May 7, which industry analysts report is the first time this has happened since 2017. Fees of 6.76 BTC were recorded for one block, and block 788695 generated fees of 6.7 BTC.
The Mempool Space explorer shows that activity has since cooled down a little and fees have fallen back below the block reward. The next block is expected to be processed, generating 4.51 BTC in fees.
The recent surge in activity and block space demand has been attributed to the increase in Ordinals inscriptions. On May 7, Glassnode’s analytics provider reported that a total of 75% of Bitcoin on-chain transactions used Taproot, resulting in a record high.
Despite speculation on Crypto Twitter, Bitcoin analysts have pointed out that the recent congestion is due to demand rather than a premeditated attack. On May 8, Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, suspended Bitcoin transactions again due to «the large volume of pending transactions.»
Related: Binance closes BTC withdrawals amid congestion on the Bitcoin network
One analyst, 0xfoobar, with 130,000 followers on Twitter, told them that «Bitcoin mempool finally gets some usage and the maxis are framing it as a DoS attack on the network. They really have not considered even the most basic scenarios, like ‘Bitcoin becomes popular and people are willing to pay to use it.'»
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