- BRC-20’s support for fungible tokens resulted in the birth of meme tokens.
- The crypto community called for the adoption of lightning networks to solve the Bitcoin network outage.
The emergence of the BRC-20 token standard may have opened up new possibilities for the Bitcoin [BTC] network. Just a few days ago, traders were convinced that Bitcoin’s restriction on allowing fungibility on its network would keep the meme token arena from expanding.
How many Worth 1,10,100 BTCs today?
But BRC-20, which only allowed the deployment of non-fungible smart contracts on the Bitcoin network, had changed that idea. At the time of writing, more than 14,000 tokens had been created under the token economy.
The BRC-20 standard, which is still in its early stages, has seen incredible growth since supporting the minting of Bitcoin Ordinals and Inscriptions. The experiment, which only started around March 8, with the first coin phase around April 4, has now fully added the functionality to create tokens.
Memes that scale up the market cap like it’s nothing
Since it was the period when meme tokens flourished, most of the assets created over the network resembled duplicates of the cryptocurrencies that were making waves on Ethereum [ETH].
But it is noteworthy to point out that the memes created under the Ethereum network could wind down their dominance. Recently long positions on some of these assets undergo liquidation. So, could it be Bitcoin’s turn to lighten up the market?
According to BRC-20.ioare some of the created tokens Oshi, xing, ordi and pepe — a different token than the hyped ERC-20-based Pepe [PEPE]. These assets have performed exceptionally, pushing the total BRC-20 market cap above $550 million.
Source: BRC-20.io
The increase in market cap means that the token developers have taken care of supply distribution coupled with price allocation. Previously, the meme mint phase, which emerged around the last week of April, produced an All-Time High (ATH) in the number of daily inscriptions.
Seen almost every day in the last week of April #Ordinal The number of registrations surpasses the previous highest daily registrations of all time. pic.twitter.com/dIFOhprPA4
— Messari (@MessariCrypto) May 7, 2023
Bitcoin: lags and a possible progress
In the meantime, Dune analysis showed that Bitcoin’s network had gained from the progress made by the BRC-20 standard. At the time of writing, the total fees generated by the network had risen to 382.47 BTC. This was a result of the increase in transactionsmade possible by the memes, which numbered a whopping 320,673.
Source: Dune analysis
Like Ethereum, Bitcoin transactions have recently experienced an increase in transaction fees. But it didn’t stop there. The network has been dealing with a backlog of transactions that are yet to be confirmed at the time of writing.
This traffic could again be associated with the increase in the thousands of BRC-20 transactions. As previously reported, Glassnodes data showed that this is the solution pass Taproot also contributed.
Taproot collects batches of transactions and signatures to make transactions faster on the Bitcoin network. When this happens, it means block sizes increase and transaction fees follow.
According to mempool.space, there were more than 450,000 unconfirmed transactions. And it would take about 192 blocks to clear the clog. But with an average block time of 10.5 minutes, it can take more than a day to achieve.
Source: mempool.space
Realistic or not, here it is The market cap of ETH in terms of BTC
After the event, many called for exchanges and self-custodial providers to adopt the Bitcoin lightning network. Although it is considered expensive, the feature solves the congestion problems the network faces.
For example, Paolo Ardoino, Chief Technology Officer at Tether [USDT]and Bitfinex encouraged other platforms to take the same step.
#bitcoin costs are high? It’s time to ask your exchange to support Lightning Network
@bitfinex supports it since 2019
— Paolo Ardoino
(@paoloardoino) May 7, 2023
