Bitcoin Blockchain Size is revised upwards Due to the Explosion in Ordinals

Blockchains grow with time as more activities are added to them. This is the current state with most blockchains such as Ethereum and Bitcoin which have experienced growth since their inception. The launch of new types of assets on blockchains results in their growth. When a blockchain grows the nodes will require more storage space to accommodate all the data on it. Recently, the Bitcoin blockchain introduced BTC Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens which has led to the increase in its block size.

Explosion of Ordinals has led to the increase in the Bitcoin blockchain

The size of the Bitcoin blockchain has increased significantly since the beginning of the year as a result of the rise in the number of Ordinal NFTs. Glassnode, the analytics firm, reported that the Bitcoin blockchain has grown by 24 Gigabytes (GB) since February this year. This shows an increase of 5.3% during the cited period and 18% since January.

As of now, the Bitcoin has a total size of around 480 GB and is expected to continue to grow due to the rise in the number of Ordinal Inscriptions. As a reminder the blockchain has been growing at an average annual rate of 36% since 2016. As such, it grew from 95 GB in 2016 to 435 GB in 2022, meaning that 350 gigabytes of data were added to it during that period.

It is also important to understand that both the sizes of the blockchain and the blocks were growing during this period. Following the creation of Bitcoin NFTs the size of the blocks have increased to 2.5 MB. Historically, the average size of the Bitcoin block hovered between 0.7 MB and 1.5 MB between July 2021 and February 2023.

The Impact of Bitcoin Ordinals on the blockchain

Already, the BTC Ordinals have brought much change to the blockchain’s activities. Glassnode reported that since the inception of Ordinal Inscriptions the network has recorded more than 44 million non-zero addresses. In addition, the blockchain recorded over 600,000 transactions of BTC NFTs.

Also, the Ordinals have resulted in the daily transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain to exceed 500, 000. Another notable thing is that there has been an increase in the number of BTC miners who have been contributing more than 438 exahashes per second (EH/s). These statistics show the stability and strength of the blockchain as well as the increase in its adoption.

As a side note, Casey Rodarmor, a software engineer, launched the Ordinals Protocols on the Bitcoin blockchain in January 2023. This has enabled creators to develop digital artworks on the blockchain which can be in the forms of JPEG images, video, audio files and PDFS.

The effect of the increase in the Bitcoin blockchain size

There is no doubt that the Bitcoin blockchain will continue to grow. What this means is that the full nodes will need to have larger spaces to download the blockchain in order to validate the transactions. However, some nodes do not download the entire blockchain. They can select the type of data they need to access.

As the size of the blockchain keeps on increasing, it experiences scalability challenges. This may lead to congestion resulting in slower transactions and high transaction fees.

Prediction of the size of the Bitcoin blockchain

According to some estimates the size of the Bitcoin blockchain will reach 1TB by 2030. If the block size remains at 2.5 MB the blockchain size will be around 500 GB in June 2023. However, if the block size increases to 4MB then the Bitcoin blockchain size will be over 600 GB in September.

Projected Bitcoin Blockchain size - Glassnode

The Graph above shows the projected Bitcoin blockchain size in September this year. A block size of 2.5 MB will result in Bitcoin having a total blockchain size of 538.06 GB. However, by September 2025, the Bitcoin blockchain size will be around 800 GB as the image below indicates.

Projected Bitcoin Blockchain size in 2025 - Glassnode

The size of the Bitcoin blockchain is expected to increase year by year, with Glassnode anticipating that it will reach 1,458.58 GB by 2030 if the block size is 2.5 MB. However it will be around 2,060 GB if the block size is 4MB.

Projected Bitcoin Blockchain size in 2030 - Glassnode

Outlook on BTC price

Bitcoin, with a market capitalization of $522,111,718,829 USD and a trading volume of $12,732,903,830 USD is trading at $26,943.38 at the time of writing, on 19 May 2023. This means that its value is 6.71% less than what it was one year ago.

Despite some pullbacks, Its price has been increasing since January. For instance, on 19 April the value of BTC was $30,365 which, however, later tumbled again. The following graph shows its performance since July 2022.

Bitcoin performance – Ycharts

As the diagram shows, the value of BTC has been dropping since 22 April. Therefore, the next few days will paint a better picture of the direction it is taking.

Conclusion

The Bitcoin blockchain has been growing remarkably after the introduction of Ordinals. Analysts believe that its size will continue to increase as more digital assets like BRC-20 are added to it. Already, its daily transactions surpass 500,000 while the blockchain computing power keeps on rising.

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