The Polygon network, a widely used Ethereum sidechain, has experienced a record-breaking increase in the number of daily transactions, leading to a significant increase in gas costs over the past 24 hours.
Activity on the network has escalated dramatically, with the number of transactions increasing from 2.89 million to an all-time high of 6.1 million between November 14 and 15, the highest since October of the previous year. This increase in network usage has led to a spike in transaction fees, with average transaction fees rising to over 7,000 Gwei (from 100 Gwei a day earlier), before falling to around 400 Gwei, according to Polygonscan.
The higher fees for transactions, especially for token swaps on the blockchain, rose to $5 for swaps, which was a huge increase over the usual rates on the network. This has now fallen to below $0.50.
But even amid the increase in transaction fees, transaction fees on the Polygon network remained lower than on the Ethereum mainnet, where token swap fees can range from $30 to $50.
Polygon PoS Chain Daily Transactions | Source: Polygon scan
A Polygon employee said the activity can be attributed to a new type of tokens called “PRC-20,” an Ordinals-inspired token standard on Polygon. Data shows that users have been minting PRC-20 tokens called POLS en masse. These tokens are created using transactional call data on the Polygon blockchain instead of the normal ERC-20 token standard.
The mechanism is inspired by Ordinals, a protocol designed for generating tokens and NFTs on the Bitcoin network. It involves a process known as ‘inscription’, which involves assigning data to individual satoshis in the Bitcoin network. However, Polygon-based PRC-20s adopt a different strategy, using transaction call data to generate tokens or unique NFT-like image artifacts embedded in the network transactions.
Developers launched tokens on the Ethereum mainnet earlier in June using a similar Ordinals-inspired protocol called Facet.