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The Bitcoin network is scaling as the network just reached a new all-time high of 1.3 MB average block size amid record low transaction fees.Â
Biggest Average Bitcoin Block Size to Date
The latest data from Blockchain.com shows that February 12, 2019 saw an average block size of 1.305 megabytes, the biggest on record.
In fact, the blocks mined (approximately every 10 minutes) today by the Bitcoin network are now regularly bigger than 1MB. This was the previous limit that existed before Segregated Witness (SegWit) was introduced in August of 2017.
With the introduction of SegWit, however, the concept of âblock sizeâ has been replaced by âblock weightâ allowing up to 4MB of capacity. Around 40 percent of all Bitcoin transactions today use SegWit.Â
Whatâs more, SegWit opened the possibility for off-chain scaling solutions such as the Lightning Network (LN), which has been growing at a rapid pace.
Transactions or Spam?
But the noticable uptick in block weight may not be due to more people paying for coffee with BTC.
One of the biggest contributors of all transactions in recent months â as much as 20 percent â has been VeriBlock. This startup uses Bitcoinâs OP_RETURN outputs to embed additional data for their âproof-of-proofâ miners.
VeriBlock miners posted 783,000 transactions to Bitcoin's blockchain in December and are on track for 1,500,000 in January. https://t.co/CdIflq8Htu
â Jameson Lopp (@lopp) January 5, 2019
VeriBlockâs large share of blockchain data in such a short-time has indeed rekindled the âtransactions or spamâ debate.
âI think if it pays the fee itâs not spam,â says developer Riccardo Casatta.
However, VeriBlock made about 1 million bitcoin tx with op_return from the 1st of December 2018, they call Proof of Proof but is it more Proof of Spam? Why more than one tx per block?
But others, like Casa CTO Jameson Lopp, are questioning whether VeriBlock can even sustain their seemingly âinefficientâ activity in the long run. Particularly, if transaction fees do not stay at record low levels. He said:
Source of the now-highest volume of OP_RETURN outputs has been identified as VeriBlock âproof of proofâ miners. They are creating around 20% of all BTC transactions now. Seems inefficient to me; will be interesting to see if the incentives work long term.
But regardless of whoâs paying for the transactions, mining larger blocks while transaction fees are at record lows shows that Bitcoin is, in fact, scaling towards greater adoption.Â
Last month, Bitcoinist reported that daily on-chain transaction volume has recovered to a yearly high of over 300,000.Â
Are Bitcoinâs bigger blocks the result of more financial transactions or âspamâ? Share your thoughts below!
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