Why the gold rush for articles broke half a dozen blockchains

The latest “gold rush” to document everything from profile pictures to memecoins has put at least half a dozen blockchain networks under pressure in the past week.

Arbitrum, Avalanche, Cronos, zkSync, and The Open Network have all experienced partial or full outages in recent writings, along with module data network Celestia's latest caveat, according to industry researchers who posted a screenshot of the block explorer on Dec. 18. .

Videos have been posted on Celestia's network about mass production.

“The team is actively investigating, but we can confirm that the continued influx of texts has caused the series to stop transmitting transactions properly,” Arbitrum confirmed on December 16 with a 78-minute outage.

Meanwhile, Kronos developer Ken Timsit reports that the team has implemented a network update to enable dynamic transaction fees that change with transaction volume.

“The chain now effectively copes with traffic flows, as seen this week, due to the high demand that has been generated,” he said.

What caused the gold rush?

Like Bitcoin Ordinals, which allows data such as text, images, and videos to be recorded on-chain, people have found that they can write data in transactions and do the same on Ethereum and other Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-based chains. Call data.

Crypto developer Shardul Mahadik explained:

“Bitcoin inscriptions are equivalent to writing on a minimal cash receipt (UTXO model). The EVM notes are equivalent to the note slots on the payment application. Write data in the note field where you make a 0 transaction for yourself. (ACC model)

Over the past few days, most of these have been BRC-20-type tokens, from various collections such as Bitcoin Frogs and various new token registries such as BMBI, BEEG and GROK, according to ordinals tracker Ord.io.

Crypto researcher Cigar says users are transferring transactions to themselves by sending TokenMint and call data because operations are cheaper.

They are ACC on other chains.

Scripts have taken down several chains in the past two days and caused massive gas crunches.

However, very few people really understand what is going on.

Here's a simple explanation of scripts – how they work and why they're spamming everywhere: pic.twitter.com/IjQ6wuypRX

— Cygaar (@0xCygaar) December 18, 2023

Bitcoin developer Eric Wall theorized earlier this month that EVM write-ups could be seen as a retail outlet for low-cap crypto assets.

Initial coin offerings are regulated and limited, and many projects launch token sales only through venture capital firms or accredited investors.

“Gas flaring/blocking space is one of the last distribution methods that have open access to retail,” he said. He described the articles as “BRC-20 Derivatives”.

“Since *anyone* can participate in token mining from day one (mining space on a block), retail is one of the last few bases on the ground that has yet to be fully transparent – an illegal fad.”

However, Michael Rinko, an analyst at crypto research firm Delphi Digital, doesn't see the logic behind it. “I see it as a hot new thing,” he told Bloomberg, “with no logic behind it.

Related: Daily gas spent on EVM posts hits $8M mark

Meanwhile, blockchain sleuth ZachXBT warned of crypto influencers shilling shitcoins in a December 19 post on social media.

“The market has been improving for weeks, but they still need to tap into this to trade profitably,” he said before adding, “This is your warning, so don't cry to me if you fall.”

Note influencers of shilling coins that have a market value or liquidity less than the total number of their mints.

The market has been trending for weeks but they still need to use this to trade profitably.

This is your warning, if you get it, don't come crying to me… pic.twitter.com/Z6n2wllM2w

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) December 18, 2023

As reported by Cointelegraph on December 18, inscriptions on EVM-compatible chains have increased over the past few days.

According to Dune Analytics, more than $6 million was spent on gas on Dec. 18 recordings, and a record $8.3 million was spent on Dec. 16.

However, on December 18, Polygon founder Sandeep Nilwal revealed that miners are switching to Polygon due to better gas charges.

Maximum number of inscriptions on @0xPolygon POS, 161m.

More than 2X the number of inscriptions on the second level chain for inscriptions.

The fun part, the gas bill still stays under 10 cents, I've heard horror stories of it going up to $400 at some chains. Peak… pic.twitter.com/RC91DaOGhx

– Sandeep Nailwal | Sandy. Polygon (@sandeepnailwal) December 18, 2023

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