Those Bitcoin Fees!
394 sats \ 16 comments \ @antic 6 Dec 2023 bitcoin
Starting to remind me of the block size wars when the network was getting fee attacked.
source: https://mempool.space/
Does anyone know of a good charting service like this one but that measures in sat/vB instead of by USD?
I don't even remember what the record sat/vB is but 300+ is crazy high. I guess the ordinal folks got used to $100 ethereum minting fees. Hopefully this doesn't last forever or lightning channel management is going only be for the big players.
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111 sats \ 0 replies \ @BitByBit21 6 Dec 2023
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111 sats \ 4 replies \ @elvismercury 6 Dec 2023
I wonder how the dynamics of {fees, ordinals, lightning, bull run} will play out. Not clear to me we're in a bull run or if this is slapping at the water trying to front-run ETF. But one day we will be, and the question stands.
A story I can imagine: bull run gets public attention back on btc, ordinals activity pick up in frantic attempt to exploit that energy, fees skyrocket even more, the narrative around btc being usable via L2 starts to choke off, investor interest curtailed, bull run premature end.
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238 sats \ 3 replies \ @antic OP 6 Dec 2023
that seems plausible to me. I think that's why ordinals are so hot right now, trying to front-run the next FOMO stage. I'm not worried about lightning not working entirely, but high base-chain fees will reduce the decentralization of it...
Also, the fact that we have been in a longer than 2 week stage of at least 10 sat/vB being purged from the mempool means all those lightning channels that have to be closed with higher fees have to be managed carefully--something the new generation of node operators are going to have a hard time with.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @elvismercury 6 Dec 2023
I can never tell where the transition from blessing to curse is. If the run is curtailed, energy dissipates, maybe the eye of Sauron darts elsewhere for one more cycle, and builders go ham on LN / L2 work for four more years while price languishes or craters, and a zillion btc obituaries get written.
Is that better or worse? Beats me.
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228 sats \ 1 reply \ @antic OP 6 Dec 2023
I don't remember who said it--maybe a lot of people at this point--but even though we all want the future to happen now, it would be catastrophic/apocalyptic if the world switched to a bitcoin standard overnight as it would mean that everything else hyperbitcoinized and collapsed super fast. So I think slow is much better. Every bitcoin obituary is a slow breath.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 6 Dec 2023
Haha, I said it, for one, but I am assuredly not the one you're quoting.
And anyway, since I agree with that sentiment, I guess the "throttling outcome" is okay by me.
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111 sats \ 7 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 6 Dec 2023
It's not exactly what you're looking for.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/fee_to_reward-btc.html#3y
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0 sats \ 6 replies \ @antic OP 6 Dec 2023
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/fee_to_reward-btc.html#3y
yeah, the dollar value of transaction fees is somewhat meaningless given arbitrary fiat price fluctuations. sat/vB is much more useful. Fee in reward at least gives a percentage. Thanks!
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111 sats \ 5 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 6 Dec 2023
Isn't that what you want? https://mempool.space/graphs/mempool#3y
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10 sats \ 4 replies \ @antic OP 6 Dec 2023
oh yeah, mempool.space is so great.
cool way to compare this to the block size war spam where the mempool was hit with almost exclusively high fee transactions.
At least legit traffic is trying to get into it currently.
But this looks like we are setting up for the highest fee environment of all time.
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @0xbitcoiner 6 Dec 2023
It's a shame you can't see the data from before 2017.
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10 sats \ 2 replies \ @antic OP 6 Dec 2023
https://twitter.com/Data_Always has data going back further on Dune
This chart was more what I was looking for. Mempool data is great--but what's in the mempool is not necessarily what ends up being the makeup of what's processed in the blocks. The level of high fee transactions really makes a difference.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner 6 Dec 2023
Something is up! The 2018 peak in the dume graph is over 500, but the memepool graph only shows 300.
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @antic OP 6 Dec 2023
it's because of the amount of high fee transactions in the mempool. Currently, there is a thinner layer of high fee txns in the pool, so the average ends up getting pulled lower. At the end of 2017, there was an attack where they were flooding the mempool with extremely high fee transactions so every block was fully saturated with the highest fees. This is why the mempool chart is awesome but harder to read about what ultimately happened on chain. The mempool chart is a snapshot of unprocessed transactions whereas the Dune chart is what is actually in the blockchain.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @antic OP 6 Dec 2023
I mean, what is this? Ethereum!?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @antic OP 6 Dec 2023
oh, this site is great: https://dune.com/dataalways/bitcoin-fee-tracker
It does look like inscriptions are slowing down on the weekly activity from a recent peak of $16M dollars worth in one week... so maybe this batch is doing it's final hoorah. TBD.
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