- Records show that inscription costs reached a record high of $8.3 million on December 16.
- With nearly $5.6 million in fees, the Avalanche network was the hardest hit.
The weekend saw a jump in network transaction fees across all blockchains, as the need for block space was driven by the Ordinals inscription frenzy, which is not limited to the Bitcoin network.
Gas prices soared this weekend due to an explosion of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chain entries. Data from Dune Analytics shows that enrollment costs reached a record high of $8.3 million on December 16.
Inscriptions Frenzy
With nearly $5.6 million spent on fees that day alone, the Avalanche network was the hardest hit. Aribitrum One spent $2.1 million on inscription fees, placing them in second place. Enrollments for EVMs accounted for 58% of Avalanche’s network gas costs and 48% of zkSync Era’s gas costs in the last 24 hours.
Sign-ups accounted for 73% of BNB Chain’s transactions in the past 24 hours. The Arbitrum One network experienced a 78-minute outage on December 15 due to the severity of the problem. Like Bitcoin’s Ordinals, EVM inscriptions create unique NFTs on the blockchain by encoding information in transaction call data.
At the same time, registrations on the Bitcoin network soared over the weekend, driving up transaction fees and the need for block space. According to mempool.space, there are approximately 280,000 transactions that have not yet been verified.
As a result, Bitcoin transaction fees have risen to as much as $37, according to analysts, making it impossible for many users to use the network for its original purpose. According to Bitcoin proponents, Ordinals cannot be stopped and the high costs encourage layer-2 adoption and drive innovation.