Bitcoin BRC-20 tokens are closing Mempool again.

Due to the popularity of BRC-20 tokens, the Bitcoin network is currently under heavy load and congestion. This has impacted transaction times and costs for sending BTC to users and merchants.

The popularity of BRC-20 tokens is putting a lot of pressure on the Bitcoin network, creating a backlog of overloaded, unverified transactions.

Bitcoin network under pressure

According to mempool.space, there are over 280,000 unconfirmed transactions on the BTC network. Also, the memory pool usage is over 300 MB and reaches 1.57GB.

Essentially, Mempool is a Bitcoin “backup” of transactions that each full node keeps to itself. If a node confirms the transaction, it waits in the memory until it is captured by a miner and entered into a block.

Once the mempool is full, nodes start prioritizing transactions by setting a minimum transaction fee threshold. Only transactions with sufficient payouts can access the mempool, which also reduces transaction spam. However, it also increases transaction costs for actual transactions.

Transaction fees have now increased to between $14 and $16.50, depending on priority.

Read more: Bitcoin NFTs: Everything you need to know about the tokens

According to Dune's analysis, there has been a significant increase in BRC-20 production over the past two days. In addition, earlier this week, token production increased by more than 450,000 per day.

BRC-20 is an experimental token standard that uses plain text to enable the creation and transfer of tokens on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Earlier this year, the broadcaster closed its network and paid transaction fees. Many thought it was just a short-term craze, but it seems it's happening again.

Plaintiffs are digital assets similar to NFTs, which can be denominated in one Satoshi, the smallest denomination of Bitcoin. The data was written by a transaction ‘witness' introduced in the 2017 SegWit update.

Related gender tokens are on the rise.

Ordinals (ORDI) BRC-20 token has reached a market cap of over $1 billion, becoming the first of its kind. ORDI is a meme coin that uses the Ordinals protocol to generate texts.

The price rose 28 percent on the day to hit a high of $65.18 a few hours ago.

Stack, the protocol to build on top of Bitcoin, has also seen the token's value rise recently. STX is up 50% in the past week, trading at $1.15 at the time of writing.

Bitcoin itself hit another 2023 high of $44,367 during the Asian trading session on Wednesday morning.