Bitcoin Network Remains Congested, But Is It Due to Possible Malicious Attack?

Since last week, the Bitcoin network has remained congested with more than 420,000 unconfirmed transactions, raising suspicions of a possible malicious attack.

According to several developers and cryptocurrency community enthusiasts, the Bitcoin network is being attacked by persons who are willing to lose millions of dollars to render the network unusable.

Bitcoin community expresses concern

Developer iris.to/jogi (@proofofjogi) stated over the weekend that Bitcoin is under a DoS attack, one of the many tools hackers use to overwhelm a website by flooding the network with access requests.

“Bitcoin is under DoS attack. High transaction fees are the chosen pain point by the attacker, probably to make Bitcoin unusable for smaller players.”

In addition, he explained that this could have been planned for several months, as network congestion has been increasing since the implementation of the Ordinals protocol, which allows the issuance of NFT tokens on the Bitcoin network.

Furthermore, user Chad Pleb pointed out that the Bitcoin network’s congestion is maliciously caused by hackers or groups willing to spend up to $9 million in losses from the minting of Ordinals tokens.

This argument was supported by Francis Pouliot, CEO and co-founder of Bull Bitcoin, who showed an image of a conversation in which a person indicated that anyone with a large amount of money could make the Bitcoin network unusable by increasing transaction costs through excessive minting of Ordinals.

Average Bitcoin transaction costs rise to 2021 levels

Despite the fact that BTC price is far from the bullish rally it experienced during 2021, where transaction costs reached an all-time high of $70, the actual cost for verifying transactions has remained relatively high, ranging between $8 and $20.

Although some analysts indicate that this is a momentary issue as average fees have been decreasing, network congestion is not improving, according to Bitcoin’s blockchain explorer and mempool, Mempool Space.

At the time of writing this note, there are more than 300,000 pending transactions, with an average cost of medium priority of approximately $7. This proves that the latest Bitcoin update sacrificed network stability for unnecessary innovation.