A spate of speculative coins resulted in a record number of transactions and an 11-fold surge in processing fees on the blockchain in May, resulting in congestion and compelling the Binance exchange to pause the withdrawal of Bitcoin for some time

The coders who maintain the Bitcoin’s blockchain are clashing over whether to remove the meme tokens flocking the network.

A spate of speculative coins resulted in a record number of transactions and an 11-fold surge in processing fees on the blockchain in May, resulting in congestion and compelling the Binance exchange to pause the withdrawal of Bitcoin for some time.

The frenzy has since mitigated, but some crypto purists worry that future tumult trading of memecoins such as the Pepe will once more congest the network and disrupt the use of Bitcoin for payments and as a store of value. They propose installing software to stop the transactions – a type of spam filter.

I do think the system is being abused, stated Bitcoin developer Ali Sherief. Bitcoin was never planned to serve as a base layer for meme tokens.

In a previous response to the biggest digital asset’s developer group, he stated that valueless tokens threaten the seamless and standard use of the Bitcoin network as a P2P digital currency.

Others support the software innovation, known as Ordinals, that permits Bitcoin’s blockchain to host lots of memecoins and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – digital collectibles – for the first time, contending it can have wider uses.

Developer Casey Rodarmor created Ordinals to let users to imprint digital content such as videos, images and text on satoshis, Bitcoin’s smallest unit. One Bitcoin consists of 100 million satoshis.

Rodarmor’s innovation took off in 2023 and was grabbed by pseudonymous blockchain expert Domo to develop the Bitcoin Request for Comment – or BRC-20 – standard, which resulted in the surge of memecoins.

There are currently around 25,000 meme tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain with a market value of nearly $475mln, as per website brc-20.io. The figure had surged beyond $1bln in early May.

Jameson Lopp, co-founder of crypto storage solutions provider Casa, stated the Bitcoin network is intended to be an “auction market for the block space” – the place where data is stored – and Ordinals simply increase demand for it.

Therefore, considering the memecoins as a denial-of-service attack is “like saying any form of auction is a denial of service, and whoever wins is denying all of the losers of the auction”, he stated.

At one time in May meme tokens and non-fungible tokens accounted for 65 per cent of the transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. The proportion has declined but continues to be higher. The average fee per transaction was $2.80 at the beginning of April, reached $30 in early May and dropped to $4 by the end of the month, according to Coinmetrics data.

The surge in fees has been a boost for miners, the operators of the computer rigs supporting Bitcoin, who have made $45mln from Ordinals-related activity, as per figures from Dune Analytics.

Bitcoin itself dropped nearly 8 per cent last month amid the tumult on its blockchain. The token, which has bounced back over 60 per cent this year, was flat at $27,160 as of 7.41 am in Singapore on Monday.

For veteran Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr, Ordinals transactions are like spam and should be kept off Bitcoin’s blockchain. He has even created a program, Ordisrespector, to let computer nodes on the network to do that.

Action should have been taken months ago, Dashjr stated in a developer group. Spam filtration has been a standard part of Bitcoin Core since day 1.