Bitcoin Block Size Could Reach 4 MB With Widespread Inscriptions

According to Cointelegraph, the Bitcoin network's average block size could potentially increase to 4 megabytes (MB) per block with the widespread adoption of inscriptions. This projection comes from a report by Mempool Research dated February 4. Currently, Bitcoin's average block size is slightly above 1.5 MB. Inscriptions, a method for efficiently encoding arbitrary data within a block, could significantly boost this size if widely adopted. The block size is a crucial factor in the scalability of the Bitcoin network. In comparison, the Solana blockchain can theoretically accommodate up to 128 MB per block, as noted by the Solana Foundation. Following Bitcoin's Taproot upgrade in 2021, some blocks have already stored up to 2.4 MB of data. The report suggests that each Bitcoin block could potentially hold as much as 4 MB. The report outlines various growth scenarios for the Bitcoin blockchain, ranging from a return to pre-inscription dynamics, which would result in slower growth, to widespread inscription adoption, potentially driving growth to 4 MB per block. Under these scenarios, the blockchain could reach 1 terabyte as early as late 2026, though a timeframe between mid-2027 and 2029 seems more likely. Bitcoin originated as a simple peer-to-peer payment protocol, but the Taproot upgrade has enabled the network to support more complex activities, such as creating and trading different types of tokens and minting non-fungible tokens (NFTs). This has revitalized Bitcoin's ecosystem, leading to the emergence of native decentralized exchanges and layer-2 scaling solutions. Bitcoin-native decentralized finance (DeFi) is anticipated to be a major theme in 2025, as institutional adoption of Bitcoin accelerates and its DeFi ecosystem matures. However, Bitcoin faces competition from other networks that offer more block space, allowing for more complex transactions and potentially lower costs for users. In September, Celestia, a layer-1 network specializing in data availability, revealed a technical roadmap aiming to scale block size to 1 gigabyte.