Lightning Network could take the pressure off Bitcoin's waiting area for new transactions. While the BTC mempool remains congested midway through the week, a lightning quick fix using the Bitcoin L2 could save the day.
While Bitcoin had whittled down waitlisted transaction orders by Wednesday, network congestion remains high. Median confirmation time hovered markedly above ten minutes. The on-chain metric for Bitcoin network fulfillment sits at a high unseen since Feb 2023 and Dec 2022.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of transactions at a time sit waiting to be confirmed. That’s far above normal levels in the tens of thousands. The extent of network lag is so high that at least one longtime Bitcoin proponent says it’s a DDoS attack by BTC senders attaching BRC-20 ordinals scripts.
Binance Turns to Lightning Network
Lightning Network is a “Layer-2” blockchain scaling platform that handles Bitcoin transactions. It periodically updates with the “Layer-1” or base chain to update it in a flash with what happened between updates. While waiting on the mempool to clear up, the L2 can keep track of Bitcoin orders.
BTC Network Jam Sends Bitcoin Transaction Fee Soaring
The blockchain has slowed very suddenly as a result of senders adding these scripts. One veteran Bitcoin supporter and software, John W. Ratcliff says that it amounts to an attack on the Bitcoin network.
On Twitter, he cited the unnecessary data-wasting format most BRC-20 users are inserting. He says it’s a level of incompetence too staggering to believe. It would be an odd way to attack the network, though, that results in its miners earning higher fees. Regardless, necessity would appear again to be the mother of innovation.