- Since the beginning of 2023, about 42 GB of data has been added to the network.
- The number of transactions has retreated against the ATH in May.
The size of Bitcoin [BTC] blockchain has grown significantly since the Ordinals frenzy took over the network in early 2023.
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As the number of Ordinals inscriptions skyrocketed, moving 12 million at the time of writing, there were concerns that the size would become so large that it would become difficult for new full node operators to store the copy of the ledger.
However, this skepticism has come to an end. According to on-chain analytics company Glassnode, the blockchain size as of June 16 was 488.9 GB with an average block size of 1.89 MB. This fell short of some of the previous 525GB and 500GB projections.
Source: Glassnode
BTC Network Gets Relief
A Bitcoin full node stores the entire blockchain ledger locally. The growing size can be a concern because the full node must keep all the transactions that ever occurred in the ledger, increasing the demand for hard drive capacity.
Digging deeper, it came to light that approximately 42 GB of data had been added to the network since early 2023, an increase of more than 9% on a year-to-date (YTD) basis and a significant 18% from last year . year.
Bitcoin’s current size was between the projections of 2.35 MB and 1.35 MB blocks. According to Bitcoin Explorer Mempool, the size of the last processed block was 1.93 MB. The number of pending transactions was still over 326,000, although down significantly from 400,000 during the network outage phase in May.
Source: Mempool
The number of transactions decreases from the peak
Network traffic has cooled significantly since the unprecedented rise in transactions in early May. The combined impact of declining volatility and the FUD around centralized exchanges may have contributed to the decline.
Source: Glassnode
As can be seen from the chart, the number of transactions, and consequently the fees paid to validate these transactions, have dropped from all-time highs (ATH). However, traffic remains higher than the 2022 bear market and similar to June 2021 levels.
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BTC climbed to a 10-day high of $26,702.37 at the time of writing, representing a 24-hour gain of 4.47%, according to CoinMarkerCap. The king coin made some progress over the past week, shaking off the FUD caused by the actions of US regulators.