Despite the price nearing its ATH, the daily number of transactions on the network of the first cryptocurrency has decreased to October 2023 levels.
On June 1, the figure dropped to 256,000.
Alongside the decline in activity, a number of transactions with minimal fees were included in blocks. Among them was one from a Bitcoin developer known as mononaut for just 0.1 satoshi per virtual byte.
a few days ago Mara finally mined this 0.1 sat/vB transaction that I started broadcasting via the public p2p relay network a month ago.
it only cost 11 sats!https://t.co/mVPxJRFjwv
— mononaut (@mononautical) June 8, 2025
According to the specialist, it took about a month to process the transaction. The fee was only 11 satoshis (about $0.01).
Mononaut clarified that the transaction was processed by Bitcoin miner MARA, which uses software called Slipstream for such cases.
this was a bespoke handcrafted artisanal transaction, lovingly carved from the finest hexadecimal characters
— mononaut (@mononautical) June 8, 2025
Open Letter
Bitcoin Core developers published an open letter on June 6, expressing opposition to the filtering of non-standard transactions and low-fee operations, like the one conducted by mononaut. In their view, such restrictions contradict Bitcoin’s fundamental principles of decentralization and censorship resistance.
“We do not support using the network for non-financial data, but we acknowledge that Bitcoin as a censorship-free system will inevitably be used for purposes not everyone likes,” the authors of the letter explained.
They also noted that redirecting users to private channels like Slipstream threatens the network’s decentralization.
The initiative drew criticism from some prominent community members. Jan3 founder Samson Mow wrote on X:
“Bitcoin Core developers are gradually changing the network, paving the way for spam. Now they want to remove the last restrictions for spammers. It’s convenient to pretend that this is just how it is, and nothing can be done.”
In the next release of Bitcoin Core, the limit on data volume for OP_RETURN will be removed. Node operators will be able to publish large volumes of data, such as media files, in transactions.