Embedded Data charts/Detected Embedded Data, Volume

Detected Embedded Data, Volume

Daily average bytes per block by protocol, mixing exact OP_RETURN script bytes with estimated inscription payload

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.

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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.

Inscription Payload vs Envelope OP_RETURN Volume Detected Embedded Data, Block Share Coinbase Message Length

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

About this metric

Definition

Everything the site detects as embedded data, by size rather than by count. 63.1% of blocks carry an OP_RETURN output and 19.7% carry a detected inscription, and the two are measured on different bases, which the bands say.

How it is measured

OP_RETURN bands are exact script bytes. The inscription band is an estimated payload, and it includes BRC-20 content because no separate byte column exists for it, unlike the count chart where the two are disjoint. Over the whole chain that is about 6.3 GB of exact bytes against about 41 GB of estimate, so the stack is mostly estimate.

Measured from my own Bitcoin node. Methodology