After more than 15 years since its inception, the Bitcoin network has reached a new milestone today by completing its 1 billionth transaction. However, Bitcoin is not the first blockchain to achieve 1 billion transactions, as Ethereum has processed nearly 2.4 billion transactions to date.
According to data from Clark Moody, the 1 billionth transaction on the Bitcoin network was completed at block height 842,241, on May 6th at 05:34:43 Taiwan time. This comes 15 years, 4 months, and 4 days after Bitcoin’s anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, mined the genesis block on January 3, 2009.
Over the past 30 days, the average number of transactions per second on the Bitcoin network was only 6. Throughout Bitcoin’s existence of 5,603 days, the network has processed an average of 178,475 transactions per day. However, this figure does not include transactions conducted on the Lightning Network, a Bitcoin Layer 2 payment protocol designed to facilitate fast transactions between participating nodes.
A report by the Bitcoin-specific trading platform, River, previously stated that as early as August 2023, the Lightning Network had already processed over 6.6 million transactions. Since its launch in January 2018, the Lightning Network has facilitated billions of transactions.
Following the fourth halving event on April 20th, the number of Bitcoin transactions increased. On April 23rd, a record of 926,000 transactions in a single day was set. This surge was mainly driven by the Rune protocol, which was launched simultaneously with the Bitcoin halving. However, the daily number of Bitcoin transactions subsequently declined to 660,260 on May 4th.
Despite reaching the milestone of 1 billion transactions, scalability remains a concern for Bitcoin. Analyst Colin Talks Crypto tweeted that as Bitcoin continues to grow, scalability issues persist. He predicts that the Bitcoin price will reach exciting peaks in the future, leading to network congestion and skyrocketing transaction fees, making it unaffordable for many. Transaction fees could potentially exceed 90% of the balance in Bitcoin holding addresses, necessitating an increase in block size.
Colin Talks Crypto also criticizes the feasibility of the Lightning Network, stating that it cannot solve the core issues at the base layer.
While Bitcoin is the oldest blockchain, it is not the first to achieve 1 billion transactions. According to data from Etherscan, Ethereum has processed nearly 2.4 billion transactions since its launch in July 2015.
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