[Mar 2026]Mempool empty, Consolidate your small inputs @0.11 sat/vbyte

[LoyceV]

Interestingly, according to this dashboard and also this one, Ordinals and Runes which had a small mini-wave in the last weeks, now are again taking less space. There's thus another reason behind the data transaction increase.

Are we about to see a new spam wave, perhaps these "non standard tokens" which deliberately violate the standardness rules of Bitcoin? See this post for more info ...

I'm still surprised by how much money they're willing to spend on this. It must have been a couple of Bitcoins in transaction fees in just a few hours. If they would have spammed a bit slower, they would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars. Which can only mean they don't care because they earn so much more than that from their spam. Which must mean their gullible victims pay for this.

[Cricktor]

When I see fee surges or occasional peaks in volume of transactions and I spot a lot of transactions flagged as data (most of them some OP_RETURN stuff), I peek here and there in those "data spam" transactions and mostly find in my chosen samples, by no means statistically representative, some Runestone crap. Whatever inscriptions became a bit rare (or I don't peek into the right corners).

As I'm not much interested to investigate this spam any further, I just wonder what new shitstone spam has been reinvented and who the hell pipes all the money into this. Whatever this is, likely more people will loose money and some rake it all up for their next scheme. I'm just mildly surprised how history can seemingly repeat itself. Ad infinitum, really? Yikes!

[philipma1957]

When I see fee surges or occasional peaks in volume of transactions and I spot a lot of transactions flagged as data (most of them some OP_RETURN stuff), I peek here and there in those "data spam" transactions and mostly find in my chosen samples, by no means statistically representative, some Runestone crap. Whatever inscriptions became a bit rare (or I don't peek into the right corners).

As I'm not much interested to investigate this spam any further, I just wonder what new shitstone spam has been reinvented and who the hell pipes all the money into this. Whatever this is, likely more people will loose money and some rake it all up for their next scheme. I'm just mildly surprised how history can seemingly repeat itself. Ad infinitum, really? Yikes!

If the people doing it are directly linked to large pools it is far cheaper to do than it looks like it is.

[Satofan44]

As I'm not much interested to investigate this spam any further, I just wonder what new shitstone spam has been reinvented and who the hell pipes all the money into this. Whatever this is, likely more people will loose money and some rake it all up for their next scheme. I'm just mildly surprised how history can seemingly repeat itself. Ad infinitum, really? Yikes!

Money taken from naive retail is often funding these spam transactions. There is just no end to the number of new suckers, and therefore the cycles of spam will continue effectively forever I think. You just have to also remember that the percentage of people that have been involved in cryptocurrency at all is still very low. So the stream will go on..

If the people doing it are directly linked to large pools it is far cheaper to do than it looks like it is.

Miners profiting through raking up the fees, sure. But a lot of the stuff comes from third entities.

I'm still surprised by how much money they're willing to spend on this. It must have been a couple of Bitcoins in transaction fees in just a few hours. If they would have spammed a bit slower, they would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars. Which can only mean they don't care because they earn so much more than that from their spam. Which must mean their gullible victims pay for this.

Exactly. It is very similar to how the government spends money since it is not theirs, they don't really care. Any rational economic participant would strive to minimize costs that will occur. On that note, I wonder if big exchanges are doing enough consolidation right now? Fees have not been this low in a long time I recon.

[katanic97]

When I see fee surges or occasional peaks in volume of transactions and I spot a lot of transactions flagged as data (most of them some OP_RETURN stuff), I peek here and there in those "data spam" transactions and mostly find in my chosen samples, by no means statistically representative, some Runestone crap. Whatever inscriptions became a bit rare (or I don't peek into the right corners).

As I'm not much interested to investigate this spam any further, I just wonder what new shitstone spam has been reinvented and who the hell pipes all the money into this. Whatever this is, likely more people will loose money and some rake it all up for their next scheme. I'm just mildly surprised how history can seemingly repeat itself. Ad infinitum, really? Yikes!

I wouldn’t say all of these projects are automatically worthless, but let’s be real most of them leave nothing useful behind once the hype fades and it all boils down to a few forgotten
transactions lingering in the mempool. There’s always someone trying to "expand" bitcoin’s purpose, but most of these attempts feel more like lab experiments than something that’s here to stay.And one question keeps popping into my head are these gimmicks actually clogging up the network and getting in the way of people who use bitcoin for what it was meant to be  a reliable way to transfer and store value? Or are they just another short lived hype wave that disappears as soon as attention fades and wallets run dry?

[pooya87]

I wouldn’t say all of these projects are automatically worthless,

They are injecting arbitrary data into the immutable database of a payment system. That is the definition of being worthless.

are they just another short lived hype wave that disappears as soon as attention fades and wallets run dry?

Well the Ordinals Attack started 2-3 years ago and has been going on ever since. So they don't really "fade away" without being blocked...

[LoyceV]

Well the Ordinals Attack started 2-3 years ago and has been going on ever since. So they don't really "fade away" without being blocked...

It'll only stop when no new victims are willing to spend money on it. I don't really get why this has to be on-chain in the first place. When I compare the estimated number of "Bitcoin users" to the total number of funded Bitcoin addresses, it's clear that the large majority keeps their coins on exchanges. Why don't they do the same with their Ordinal crap? Keep it on a centralized exchange!
This is of course a rhetorical question. They need Bitcoin's name to sell their money maker.

[katanic97]

Well the Ordinals Attack started 2-3 years ago and has been going on ever since. So they don't really "fade away" without being blocked...

It'll only stop when no new victims are willing to spend money on it. I don't really get why this has to be on-chain in the first place. When I compare the estimated number of "Bitcoin users" to the total number of funded Bitcoin addresses, it's clear that the large majority keeps their coins on exchanges. Why don't they do the same with their Ordinal crap? Keep it on a centralized exchange!
This is of course a rhetorical question. They need Bitcoin's name to sell their money maker.

I think it's pretty clear when you realize that it’s all just a marketing trick. They have to latch onto the bitcoin name to sell their JPEGs or whatever else they’re promoting. If this was happening on some regular centralized platform, no one would care...
Meanwhile, the network gets clogged, fees go up, and people who just want to use bitcoin end up paying the price. And as long as there are people throwing money at it, it’s not going to disappear on its own. Fixing this would require a lot more changes  but right now, that seems almost impossible.

[Upgrade00]

Fixing this would require a lot more changes  but right now, that seems almost impossible.

I don't think any of the changes needed will ever be made or that a consensus will be reached for any. Bitcoin was designed to be censor-proof, so it will go against it to try and censor any transactions at any time, no matter how annoying they are to the community.

As suggested above, they will die out on their own when they hype fizzles out and no one is willing to burn anymore of their money on them. Till then we can only educate people to not jump on the trend and consolidate when fees go low.

[LoyceV]

I think it's pretty clear when you realize that it’s all just a marketing trick. They have to latch onto the bitcoin name to sell their JPEGs or whatever else they’re promoting.

That's why I said it's a rhetorical question But still, it doesn't make sense: exchanges trick people into withdrawing made-up "wrapped" tokens instead of real Bitcoins, exchanges convince people to keep their Bitcoins on their exchange, but the spammers do all their shit on-chain.

Back ontopic: today's a good time to consolidate at the absolute minimum of transaction fees again

[katanic97]

I think it's pretty clear when you realize that it’s all just a marketing trick. They have to latch onto the bitcoin name to sell their JPEGs or whatever else they’re promoting.

That's why I said it's a rhetorical question But still, it doesn't make sense: exchanges trick people into withdrawing made-up "wrapped" tokens instead of real Bitcoins, exchanges convince people to keep their Bitcoins on their exchange, but the spammers do all their shit on-chain.

Back ontopic: today's a good time to consolidate at the absolute minimum of transaction fees again

Exchanges have an interest in keeping users funds on their platforms, mostly for control in my opinion. But that doesn’t mean the Bitcoin network is sitting idle it’s actually being used quite a lot. Spam transactions might not showcase that in a nicer way, but they’re still proof that block space is being purchased

[dkbit98]

That's why I said it's a rhetorical question But still, it doesn't make sense: exchanges trick people into withdrawing made-up "wrapped" tokens instead of real Bitcoins, exchanges convince people to keep their Bitcoins on their exchange, but the spammers do all their shit on-chain.

What spam?
Bitcoin mempool is empty for months and number of transactions is slowly but surely decreasing, and you can consolidate almost every day.
People who want to crate spam moved on new altcoin blockchains, so I think even ethereum fees are now much lower.

[Satofan44]

That's why I said it's a rhetorical question But still, it doesn't make sense: exchanges trick people into withdrawing made-up "wrapped" tokens instead of real Bitcoins, exchanges convince people to keep their Bitcoins on their exchange, but the spammers do all their shit on-chain.

What spam?
Bitcoin mempool is empty for months and number of transactions is slowly but surely decreasing, and you can consolidate almost every day.
People who want to crate spam moved on new altcoin blockchains, so I think even ethereum fees are now much lower.

I don't think he is necessarily talking about today. As currently the mempool is empty for some time, previously it was full all the time for many months. I remember all the fuss about ordinals, and then runes and so on during the last year. I'm not sure whether it will come back as the wider market of these things suffered massive losses after this period of activity and spam. However, I don't think that we will lack in subsequent "innovations" of these things in the future.

Anyway the point stands that there is no reason to do everything on chain.

Back ontopic: today's a good time to consolidate at the absolute minimum of transaction fees again

If only all major services always paid attention to this.  

[LoyceV]

Mempool is empty, this is the moment to pay the very minimum (1.00 sat/vbyte) and still have a high chance of getting a fast confirmation.

It doesn't get any better than this:


It helps that 12 blocks were found in the past hour, but even before that, most blocks were not full for hours.

[Medusah]

It's always sad seeing an empty mempool. 

[LoyceV]

It's always sad seeing an empty mempool. 

For just 0.01 BTC per block, you can fill it again

[Medusah]

It's always sad seeing an empty mempool. 

For just 0.01 BTC per block, you can fill it again

I'd be satisfied seeing people competing on who would fill it first.  I guess it is bitcoin's fate to have a variable mempool.

[LoyceV]

I guess it is bitcoin's fate to have a variable mempool.

It kinda worries me that on-chain Bitcoin activity is so low now. It made me think long-time spam and long-time high fees lead to more funds "stored" on centralized exchanges instead of in self-custody.

[Medusah]

I guess it is bitcoin's fate to have a variable mempool.

It kinda worries me that on-chain Bitcoin is so low now. It made me think long-time spam and long-time high fees lead to more funds "stored" on centralized exchanges instead of in self-custody.

People who save in bitcoin, and who understand what it is, do not store them in exchanges.  The reason there's less on-chain volume is due to the inevitable nature of bitcoin; it solves a much bigger problem as a store of value than as medium of exchange.  Protecting yourself against central bank inflation is a much bigger problem to the world than transacting peer-to-peer. I would bet that the more we move towards a bitcoin standard, the more people will save in it and the volume will increase more or less linearly. 

[katanic97]

I guess it is bitcoin's fate to have a variable mempool.

It kinda worries me that on-chain Bitcoin is so low now. It made me think long-time spam and long-time high fees lead to more funds "stored" on centralized exchanges instead of in self-custody.

People who save in bitcoin, and who understand what it is, do not store them in exchanges.  The reason there's less on-chain volume is due to the inevitable nature of bitcoin; it solves a much bigger problem as a store of value than as medium of exchange.  Protecting yourself against central bank inflation is a much bigger problem to the world than transacting peer-to-peer. I would bet that the more we move towards a bitcoin standard, the more people will save in it and the volume will increase more or less linearly. 

I agree that most people who understand Bitcoin keep their coins off exchanges and view it more as a form of savings than something to use for everyday spending.A lot of transactions are now moving to the Lightning Network and other L2 solutions, so we don’t see them directly on the blockchain. That doesn’t mean people aren’t using Bitcoin it’s just that the technology has advanced a bit, and some things are happening more "behind the scenes."As for the idea of a Bitcoin standard if it ever actually happens i believe many people will start by saving in BTC, but over time, the moment will come when it starts getting used for payments too, especially for bigger purchases.