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‘Bitcoin not under attack,’ BTC analysts mitigate concerns of DoS attack

Date:

SNEAK PEEK

  • Concerns related to a Denial of Service exploit on the Bitcoin network were widespread on Crypto Twitter.
  • Bitcoin commentators and analysts have calmed their followers to not worry. 
  • An increase in Ordinal inscriptions is reportedly the reason behind the increased activity and block space demand.

An unexpected surge in the transaction fees and unconfirmed transactions of Bitcoin led to concern on Crypto Twitter regarding a possible Denial of Service attack. 

Certain Bitcoin commentators and analysts have reduced such concerns of their followers. According to BitInfoCharts, the current average transaction fees of Bitcoin are $19.20, i.e. 0.00068 BTC. As per Mempool Space, the current backlog of transactions are at 459,341.

Owing to the spike in demand on the network, on May 7, the overall fee for each block has temporarily surpassed the block subsidy rewards of 6.25 BTC. 

The PoW mining process has a fixed block subsidy of 6.25 BTC and it halves in every four years. However, in the rare occasion of an increase in the block space demand, the figure can surpass, which leads to higher transaction fees. 

Since 2017, this has happened for the first time, as reported by industry analysts. For one block, the recorded fees were 6.76 BTC and fees of 6.7 BTC were generated by block 788695. 

The Mempool Space explorer shows the activity cooling down a little since then with fees falling back below the block reward. As per expectations, the next block will generate fees of 4.51 BTC.

The increase in both activity and block space demand has been credited to the surge in Ordinals inscriptions. According to Glassnode, the analytics provider, on May 7, 75% of Bitcoin on-chain transactions used Taproot that led to a record high.

On Crypto Twitter, some users have speculated that the reason behind the congestion has happened because of a Denial of Service exploit on the Bitcoin network. 

Bitcoin analysts believe that it happened owing to a demand and not a pre-planned attack. “0xfoobar” tweeted that Bitcoin Mempool has got some use and it is being framed as a DoS attack by the maxis. 

Binance suspended Bitcoin transactions on May 8 on the grounds of the large volume of pending transactions. In the last 12 hours, Bitcoin transactions have been suspended by Binance for the second time. 

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