Have you noticed a sudden spike in Polygon gas fees? On a particular Thursday, the transaction costs on Polygon’s proof-of-stake chain soared beyond $0.10 or 5,000 gwei. This sharp rise coincided with an apparent surge in PRC-20 related activity, linked to inscriptions. However, the gas fees quickly dropped to approximately 270 gwei, as reported by livdir.com’s Polygon Gas Price Chart. This represented a drastic 1,000% increase from the previous day when transactions were priced at 477 gwei.
Understanding the Spike in Gas Fees
Gas fees represent the computational power necessary to execute a transaction on Polygon’s network. To give you a clearer picture, 1 gwei equals 0.000000001 MATIC. During this period of increased gas fees, several transactions contained JSON text as input data. This is characteristic of text-based inscriptions related to BRC-20 tokens on Bitcoin. It appears that a token named POLS was the primary culprit behind the heightened activity on Polygon that day.
Twitter user @0xhuoshen posted a screenshot displaying several consecutive PRC-20-related transactions aimed at ‘minting’ the POLS token. At the time, approximately 9% of the token’s total supply of 2.1 trillion had been minted, as per evm.ink. POLS had 18,100 different owners at that time.
Similar Activity on Bitcoin
Earlier this year, Bitcoin experienced a similar situation. The fever for ‘minting’ or claiming BRC-20 tokens led to transaction fees on Bitcoin reaching multi-year highs. Although the fees eventually decreased, they have since experienced a resurgence due to renewed Ordinals activity, as per data from Ycharts.
The BRC-20s, a novel class of tokens, were introduced by an anonymous data analyst named Domo in March. Other developers have attempted to emulate the BRC-20 standard on different networks, such as Ethereum, with the launch of Ethscriptions.
Future of Inscription-Based Tokens
According to Tom Lehman, co-founder of Ethscriptions, the wave of inscription-based tokens is unstoppable. He expressed his curiosity about their purpose on Polygon, considering the low transaction fees. He also wondered about their role on Ethereum. The first BRC-20 token was developed by Domo, who was inspired by the ERC-20 token standard on Ethereum. This standard, proposed in 2015, laid out a vision for fungible tokens on the network, used for tokens like the stablecoin Tether.
Recently, some Bitcoin enthusiasts have taken matters into their own hands concerning BRC-20 activity. A bot created by a pseudonymous developer known as the Sophon disrupted hundreds of newly created BRC-20 tokens on Bitcoin in October.
Keeping track of such dynamic crypto events can be challenging. However, applications like cryptoview.io can be a valuable tool in staying updated with the latest trends and movements in the crypto world.
