Bitcoin
OKX admits testing ‘collection program’ as Bitcoin rates soar
OKX acknowledged testing a new program on the Bitcoin network, causing the average transaction fee to rise to over $50 per transfer.
,According to data from mempool.space, the average transaction fee on the Bitcoin network rose to as much as $52 on Friday, requiring more than 5.4 BTC (about $400,000) in fees to be paid to miners to generate a single block on the Bitcoin network. Crypto Exchange OKX appears to be responsible for the abnormal increase in transaction fees in the Bitcoin network
After questions were raised, OKX’s Chinese account promptly responded to them on X, confirming that the exchange was behind the recent surge. They stated that OKX was “testing a collection program” and has now ended the test.
As of press time, the exact method by which OKX was able to significantly alter Bitcoin’s network fee landscape remains unclear.
Web3 analyst @1999_eth has suggested that the exchange may have deployed a faulty script. Regardless of the cause, the incident impacted the entire network, with more than 330,000 transactions currently stuck as of press time.
Bitcoin network congestion typically increases during periods of high transaction volume or major events in the crypto market. For example, during Bitcoin’s rally to the $20,000 level in 2017, the number of unconfirmed transactions in the mempool skyrocketed to approximately 180,000, causing multi-day delays for users waiting for transaction processing.