On May 7, 2023, the Bitcoin network experienced a bottleneck due to an overwhelming 500,000 unconfirmed transactions. However, the backlog is gradually clearing, resulting in a significant drop in onchain fees. As of May 11, there are only slightly over 300,000 unconfirmed transactions awaiting confirmation, and approximately 185 blocks need to be mined to clear the backlog.
The surge in demand can be attributed to the recent craze for Ordinal inscription and the emergence of the BRC20 token economy. Despite the backlog, the global hashrate is holding steady at 342 exahash per second (EH/s), and the difficulty is expected to increase on May 18.
All Comments