Bitcoin Inscriptions See Resurgence, Occupy 40% Of Transfers
On-chain data shows that Bitcoin sign-ups have bounced back after seeing the previous decline, now hitting a new all-time high transaction count.
Bitcoin sign-up transaction count share hit a new 40% ATH
According to data from on-chain analytics firm glassnode, a peak of around 193,000 entries was recorded in a single day recently. “Inscriptions” here refer to an application of the Bitcoin network that is similar to “non-fungible tokens” (NFTs) used in other blockchains.
There is a big difference between Inscriptions and NFTs on other networks like Ethereum, however, is that Inscriptions are directly inscribed on the blockchain (which is what earned them their name).
Them being stored directly on-chain in this way has implications for Bitcoin block size and overall blockchain size, which a previous Glassnode report already discussed.
Since its inception, subscriptions have enjoyed an increasing amount of popularity, but earlier this month, they faced some decline. In recent days, however, this BTC app has seen a resurgence.
The chart below shows how the number of new Inscriptions being minted daily has changed since its inception.
The value of the metric seems to have been quite high in recent days | Source: Glassnode on Twitter
As displayed in the graph, inscription transactions recorded their all-time high recently as the network observed 193,000 inscriptions being minted in a single day.
The graph also breaks down how many of those transactions that occur on the network involve which type of Subscriptions. There are five main categories here: image, text, audio, video and others.
While image inscriptions were the most popular type in the early days of the technology, text-based ones seem to have dominated the Bitcoin blockchain recently. The other categories seem to have seen very few mints compared to these two.
As a percentage of the total transactions (of any type) taking place on the BTC network, Subscriptions occupied 40% share during its last increase in usage.
Looks like the value of the metric has been elevated recently | Source: Glassnode on Twitter
Interestingly, while Subscriptions may have recently made a comeback, their block size share has continued to decline, as the chart highlights.
Decreasing block size share of the transactions associated with Inscriptions | Source: Glassnode on Twitter
The reason behind this trend lies in the fact that text-based signups are gaining traction lately, which are naturally significantly lighter in terms of data size as compared to other types like image or video.
From the graph below, it is evident that the text entries currently on the chain have a negligible average size (almost 0 kB), while the image type has an average size of around 13 kB.
The audio type has the largest mean size at around 115 kB | Source: Glassnode on Twitter
BTC price
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $27,700, down 8% over the last week.
BTC has seen significant decline in the last few days | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView
Featured Image of Jievani Weerasinghe on Unsplash.com, Charts by TradingView.com, Glassnode.com