Ordinals Inscriptions Spark Blockchain Fee Surge, NFT Market Boom

The Ordinals Inscriptions frenzy continues to push demand for blockspace, which has led to an increase in network transaction fees across all blockchains over the weekend. However, this demand extends beyond the Bitcoin network. Over the weekend, inscriptions on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains increased, resulting in a higher amount of gas spent on these chains.

Dune Analytics provided information that the amount of money spent on inscriptions on gas reached an all-time high of $8.3 million on December 16th. On that one day, the Avalanche network was the one that spent the most money on gas, with more than $5.6 million being spent.

EVM inscriptions gas expenses. Source: Dune Analytics

Aribitrum One spent $2.1 million on gas for inscriptions, securing second place. EVM inscriptions have accounted for 58% of Avalanche’s network gas consumption over the course of the last twenty-four hours, while zkSync Era has seen 48% of its fees allocated to EVM inscriptions.

Furthermore, throughout the course of the last twenty-four hours, inscriptions have accounted for seventy-three percent of the transactions that have taken place on the BNB Chain. On the 15th of December, the situation on the Arbitrum One network was so severe that it resulted in an outage that lasted for 78 minutes.

EVM inscriptions, similar to Ordinals on the Bitcoin network, contain information in transaction call data to generate unique non-fungible assets on the blockchain. In the meantime, the Bitcoin network has also witnessed an increase in the number of inscriptions over the course of the weekend, which has led to an increase in the demand for block space as well as the fees associated with transactions.

Currently, mempool.space reports approximately 280,000 unconfirmed transactions. Because of this, Bitcoin transaction costs have increased to as high as $37, according to observers. The high costs prevent the majority of people from using the network as intended, which is to facilitate peer-to-peer digital currency transactions.

Adam Back, a pioneer in the field of cryptography and Bitcoin, stated that ordinary cannot be halted and that the high costs “drive adoption of layer 2 and force innovation.” A single collection just did more volume in the past twenty-four hours than CryptoPunks, BAYC, MAYC, Pudgy Penguins, Azuki, DeGods, Moonbirds, Doodles, and Meebits combined, according to “Leonidas,” an expert on NFT and Ordinals, who made this observation on December 18th.

Additionally, according to his assessment, the Bitcoin Frogs ordinals collection topped the list for market valuation with a total of 182 million dollars. A surge in secondary sales of the collection reached $4.8 million on December 17, according to Cryptoslam. This is a significant increase.