Polygon Processes Over 6 Million Transactions, Sparking Gas Fee Surge

• Transactions on Polygon surged from 2.9 million to 6.1 million in just one day to set a one-year high, with the transaction cost surging a massive 70x before settling at 4x.
• This heightened activity level pushed the swap cost by 1,000% to $5, but it was still lower than the $30-50 that the Ethereum blockchain charges.

When Ordinals debuted on the Bitcoin blockchain, on-chain activity spiked as Bitcoiners rushed to mint their first NFT on the network. Since then, other networks have been exploring Ordinals-inspired developments, and the latest to get it right is Polygon. Demand for these newly-minted tokens, known as POLS, skyrocketed and with it, the gas fees and the MATIC price.

The Polygon community was eagerly anticipating the new tokens, and on Thursday, the members finally got their hands on POLS. Data shows that over 6.1 million transactions happened on November 16th, more than double the 2.89 million transactions the day prior.

Polygon Scan shows even more impressive numbers. The blockchain explorer shows that overall, the network recorded over 16 million transactions, the highest daily transaction number since it started displaying data in mid-2020

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The scramble to be among the first to lay their hands on the tokens ended up pushing the gas fees to unprecedented levels. According to the blockchain analytics platform Dune Analytics, over 102.8 million MATIC tokens were used as gas fees, amounting to over $86 million at current prices. Despite the influx of activity, the Polygon blockchain showed its resilience with no backlogs.

The surge in transactions even surprised the founder, Sandeep Nailwal who also pointed out that the chain had managed to be resilient through it all.

What is going on on @0xPolygon POS chain? 6m transactions in last 24 hrs. 170 TPS on average. 1mn+ MATIC burnt by the protocol. The chain worked smoothly, gas fees went crazy though but no reorgs or 0 blocks etc.

I hear there is some game Baby Shark Launching, could that be the…

— Sandeep Nailwal | sandeep. polygon 💜 (@sandeepnailwal) November 16, 2023

Polygon Gas Price Surges 2,500%

With the surge in demand for POLS came the inevitable rise in gas prices. Data shows that before the implosion, gas fees on the Polygon chain were just short of 200 Gwei. However, in a few hours, it shot up to over 5,000 Gwei, an incredible 2500%.

The fees have dipped to the normal levels at press time.

All the hype is around POLS, the Ordinals-inspired tokens on Polyon. The token is built on PRC-20, a network protocol similar to Ethereum’s ERC-20 or Bitcoin’s BRC-20.

Unlike with the other tokens, POLS and Ordinals rely on inscriptions on the main layer. The wave has spread to Ethereum as well, and according to Ethscriptions founder Tom Lehmann, who’s leading the campaign on the Ethereum network, it can’t be stopped.

Tom told one outlet:

The inscriptions-based token wave cannot be stopped. I do wonder about the purpose of this on Polygon, where transaction fees are so low. Then again, I also wondered about the purpose of it on Ethereum.

The price of MATIC could be the big beneficiary of this influx of activity. Data shows that less than 20,000 Polygon addresses currently own POLS. However, the network boasts more than 400,000 daily users; therefore,  up to 95% of the addresses still don’t own these tokens, and if they get to minting, the demand, price and fees on the MATIC network could skyrocket.