The Impact of Spam


Mempool.space's transactions by fee rate since 2020

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A clear increase in transactions entering mempool.space can be seen starting February 2023. Until today, such increases are usually only experienced by the network during the so-called "bull runs", making this one a noticeable anomaly.
Want to see what a spam-free mempool looks like? Take a look at this one, hosted by @leo_haf.
This mempool does not contain this kind of spam:
● "inscriptions"● (fake) bare multisig● (fake) bare pubkey● OP_RETURN

Space occupied by non-payments VS payments on the timechain since January 2023

Soon after the beginning of the 2023 spam wave, non-financial transactions have been occupying about 50% of the available blockspace, except during short breaks. This chart does not consider data storage transactions that use bare multisig. BTC spam analysis

Fees paid by by non-payments VS payments on the timechain since January 2023

Although non-payment related transactions occupy about 50% of each block, the majority of the fees paid in each block are still coming from payments. This data shows how non-payment transactions (spam) are displacing payment transactions, this is forcing payment transactions to pay a much higher fee to be included in blocks. BTC Spam analysis

Size of UTXO since January 2023

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The size of the UTXO set, number of unspent UTXO outputs, has seen a drastic increase since the beginning of the 2023 spam wave. This is partially due to Inscriptions/BRC-20 but mainly due to spam that relies on bare-multisig data to store data on the timechain. UTXO set size

Examples of spam in Bitcoin

These are the examples of the spam in Bitcoin:● "Inscription without any input or output"● "Inscription with input and output"● "Spam with OP_RETURN method"