Bitcoin’s average block size has hit all-time highs above 2.5 megabytes (MB) for the first time since its inception in 2009, driven by the launch of ניט-פונגיבלע טאָקענס (NFTs) protocol Ordinals in January 2023.
פאַרשפּאַרן גרייס דאַטע from Blockchain.com reflects a jump in Bitcoin block size from the beginning of February 2023, increasing over 2MB in the weeks following the launch of the Ordinals Protocol.
As Cointelegraph reported, participants from the Bitcoin mining ecosystem have already made over $600,000 processing transactions of Ordinals, which have been dubbed as Bitcoin-based NFTs.
פֿאַרבונדענע: Bitcoin hits record 44M non-zero addresses, thanks to Ordinals: Glassnode
Software engineer Casey Rodarmor launched the Ordinals protocol in January, allowing the creation of Bitcoin “digital artifacts” on the network. These can comprise JPEG images, PDFS and video and audio files.
As Rodarmor outlines in the Ordinals documentation, these digital artifacts can be inscribed to an individual satoshi that makes up a whole Bitcoin. Each BTC is made up of 100,000,000 satoshis.
The inception of Bitcoin Ordinals has also seen the network hit a record 44 million non-zero addresses, as per data from Glassnode. Glassnode’s latest newsletter notes that Ordinals compete for block space demand but have not yet significantly impacted network fees.
Glassnode describes the advent of Ordinals as a “new and unique moment in Bitcoin history,” whereby innovation generates network activity without the “classical transfer of coin volume for monetary purposes.“
Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/out-of-the-ordinal-ry-bitcoin-average-block-size-hits-all-time-high