Last Updated on May 8, 2023 by Bitfinsider

The Bitcoin sector of cryptocurrencies expresse high level of concern on Sunday, as there was a lot of anxiety on Twitter due to some users perceiving the high transaction fees and the backlog of transactions as an assault against Bitcoin.

As of this writing, mempool.space reports that there are over 469,000 transactions awaiting confirmation in the mempool of Bitcoin. Transactions are transferred to the network’s mempool before being added to the blockchain of Bitcoin, where they wait to be chosen by a Bitcoin miner and included in Bitcoin’s following block.

According to mempool.space, Bitcoin transaction fees were also unusually high, with high-priority transactions charging a rate of 654 Sat/vB, or almost $26.

The two measurements indicated that the Bitcoin network was particularly congested, but some believed that this was the result of criminal activity meant to shut off users who couldn’t handle the rise in transaction fees.

Bitcoin-maxi Dylan LeClair agreed that high transaction fees might be used as a “attack vector” against Bitcoin. However, he asserted that increasing prices in the short run had little effect on Bitcoin in the long run.

Twitter user @Toma_7_32 noted that, despite what some are calling a “attack on Bitcoin,” filling up the mempool mostly favors miners, who “are having a blast” while earning the benefits of higher transaction fees.

According to the account, any impact on the network would be short-lived until people saturating Bitcoin’s mempool with transactions ran out of money.

Others blamed Ordinals, a system used to create NFT-like assets on Bitcoin, for the rise in transaction costs and Bitcoin’s enormous backlog. According to a Dune dashboard, the overall amount of digital assets based on Bitcoin, known as inscriptions, sailed passed 4.3 million on Sunday. According to various reports, there were 2.5 million inscriptions just last week.

The rise in use of BRC-20 tokens, which were first introduced as an experiment in March, can be ascribed to the recent rise in inscriptions. These tokens built on top of Bitcoin that resemble ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum can now be traded thanks to exchanges like UniSat Wallet.

According to another Dune dashboard, as of this writing, UniSat Wallet had completed over $9.3 million in inscriptions trading activity on Sunday alone. The number corresponded to about 7,500 transactions.

While the discussion about Ordinals and Bitcoin transaction fees intensified on Sunday, the price of Bitcoin was mostly unchanged. According to CoinGecko, the coin was down about 0.1% at around 28,800 as of the time of writing.

And although some people on Twitter expressed worry, others, like Kashif Raza, disputed the idea that Bitcoin was under attack by pointing out that Ordinals is an innovation made possible in part by Bitcoin’s taproot upgrade.

“The developers are using it to explore new possibilities that you can’t stop,” he remarked. “This is what you call a free market.”