Microtransactions valued below 0.01 Bitcoin now account for approximately 80% of all daily network activity, pushing transaction volumes near record highs despite weak price performance. This surge has propelled CryptoQuant’s Network Activity Index into positive territory for the first time since 2024.
Transactions under 0.01 BTC represented only 44% of daily volume in 2023. Their share has nearly doubled, fueled primarily by non-financial data inscription protocols like Ordinals, Runes, and BRC-20 tokens. Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, warns that sustained growth in this sector increases block space competition and raises fees for standard economic transfers, despite the disproportionately small economic value of these microtransactions.
Current congestion remains below previous inscription boom peaks but is significant. The OP_RETURN opcode, which allows massive data embedding without spendable outputs, has reached near-record usage in 2026 following the removal of relay limits by Bitcoin Core developers. These protocols generate high volumes of dust-value transactions, pushing the Bitcoin mempool to roughly 128,000 unconfirmed transactions, its highest level since February 2025.