Binance recently suspended Bitcoin transactions twice within a few hours due to network congestion and surging transaction fees.
The platform was overwhelmed by the high volume of pending transactions, causing it to raise withdrawal fees and enable Lightning Network withdrawals to help clear the backlog.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao took to Twitter to explain that the exchange’s fee parameters did not anticipate the recent surge in BTC network gas fees.
To address the issue, the platform is replacing pending withdrawal transactions with a higher fee to ensure that they get picked up by mining pools.
Although Bitcoin transactions resumed after the initial suspension, Binance had to suspend them again due to the overwhelming volume of pending transactions. However, after replacing the transactions with higher fees, the platform has resumed Bitcoin withdrawals.
The surge in demand for the Bitcoin network has been attributed to the popularity of memecoins and ordinal inscriptions.
This has led to a clogged mempool and skyrocketing transaction fees, with fees exceeding the mining subsidy of 6.25 BTC for the first time since 2017.
BTC pioneer Jameson Lopp commented on the milestone, saying that the model for thermodynamic security has been proven possible, and the only remaining question is whether the demand is sustainable.
At the time of writing, there were over 450,000 pending transactions, and the average transaction fees had surged to over $15, according to Mempool.Space data.
Binance’s integration of the Lightning Network is expected to help expedite Bitcoin transaction processing and ease the backlog caused by the surging demand for the network.
