From soft and hard forks to protocol upgrades, to the implementation of Segwit and to the future outlook of the Lightning Network (LN), the Bitcoin network has come a long way since its inception in January 2009. As of Sept. 18, 2018, the average block size on the Bitcoin network is .8MB and the average number of transactions per block is 1609 — so a few eyebrows were raised when a block over 2MB was added to the blockchain on Sept. 5, 2018.
Bitcoin block 540107 came in at 2.26MB; in terms of megabytes, a block this big has never been added to the blockchain before. Although the bear market has been going on for nine months, block 540107 could be a sign that the Bitcoin network is progressing technologically. To understand why, let’s first have a look at the current state of the Bitcoin network.
Currently on the Bitcoin network, the average block size is 0.804MB and there are an average of 1609 transactions per block — that is why a block like 540107, which is 2.26MB big but only has 230 transactions included in it, is such an anomaly.
Read more: https://cointelegraph.com/news/the-current-state-of-the-bitcoin-network-and-its-biggest-block
