Embedded Data charts/Coinbase Message Length

Coinbase Message Length

Length of decoded ASCII text found in each block's coinbase transaction. Mining pools embed identifiers, timestamps, and occasionally custom messages in this space

Linear: equal distances are equal differences, so 0 to 100 takes the same height as 100 to 200. Logarithmic: equal distances are equal ratios, so each step up is a multiplication, and only positive values can be drawn. A series spanning several orders of magnitude, such as price or difficulty, shows its early years on a log axis and flattens into a line along the bottom on a linear one.

Short ranges plot one point per block, about one every ten minutes. Longer ranges plot one point per day, computed from every block in that day. How it is computed depends on the chart: some average, some total the day up, some are a ratio of the day's sums, and each chart says which. Either way a brief spike inside a day is smoothed away.

Not available at this range

This chart is computed per block. Pick 1M or shorter.

Key factsCalculated from the points currently plotted, so they follow the range you pick. Zooming with the slider changes only what you see, not these.

over selected range

OverlaysExtra context drawn on top of the chart. Event markers are vertical lines at dated moments; a comparison series is a second set of numbers on its own axis at the right.

Event markers

Every 210,000 blocks, roughly every four years, the block subsidy halves. Fees are the other part of what a miner collects and do not halve with it. Four halvings have happened so far.

A BIP is a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal: a design document for a change to the protocol. These lines mark the dates that proposals such as SegWit and Taproot became active on the network.

Releases of Bitcoin Core, the software most nodes run. A release does not change consensus rules by itself, but it often changes what transactions a node will relay, which can show up in these charts.

Dated moments outside the protocol that moved the numbers: exchange failures, country-level bans, the first Ordinals inscriptions.

Comparison series

The BTC price in US dollars, drawn on its own axis on the right. Sampled every 4 days, which is all the source provides for the full history, so a range shorter than that cannot draw it. Price crosses six orders of magnitude, so it usually wants the logarithmic setting beside it.

The total size of the block chain on disk, growing as blocks are added. An archival node keeps every byte of it; a pruned one verifies the same blocks and then discards the old ones.

Compare with

one at a time: they share the right axis

RelatedCharts measuring the same thing or covering the same part of the network, for reading this one in context.

Ordinals Inscriptions OP_RETURN Count Detected Embedded Data, Count Detected Embedded Data, Block Share

Get this data

CSV and JSON take the selected range without overlay series. PNG captures the chart as it looks now.

About this metric

Definition

Every block's first transaction has a field the miner fills in freely, which is where Satoshi left the Times headline in the genesis block. Most of what goes there now is a pool name and some binary. This is how many readable characters each one holds: the longest in the chain is 94.

How it is measured

Every block's coinbase transaction contains a scriptSig with arbitrary data. Miners use this to embed their pool identifier, block height (required since BIP-34), and sometimes custom messages or political statements. A longer message means more readable characters, not a particular pool or purpose.

Measured from my own Bitcoin node. Methodology