Original Author: TechFlow
As Bitcoin price oscillates at $105,000, a silent cold wave is spreading across the underlying network. On June 9, 2025, the Bitcoin blockchain reached a historic moment - the seven-day moving average transaction volume plummeted to 317,000 transactions, hitting the lowest level since October 2023. This liquidity crisis not only exposed the fragility of miners' revenue models but also triggered fierce debates between Bitcoin fundamentalists and technical reformists.
I. Cliff-like Decline in On-chain Activity: Ecological Alarm Behind the Data
The Block blockchain explorer shows that Bitcoin's seven-day moving average transaction volume dropped to approximately 317,000 on Friday, the lowest since October 2023, when it fell to 269,000. Notably, this transaction volume contraction exhibits "three lows" characteristics: active addresses dropped below 942,000, unconfirmed transaction mempool inventory plunged 99% to 3,000 transactions, and median transaction fee fell below 1 sat/vB (about $0.00001).
Miners' economic model is facing a double squeeze. Cryptoquant data shows that network-wide daily fee income sharply decreased from $4.7 million in October 2024 to $593,000, with fee proportion in miners' revenue dropping below the 2% survival line. In MARA pool's Slipstream private channel, transactions with fees as low as $0.01 have been stagnant for 30 days, exposing the deep crisis of excess mining capacity.
II. Collision of Technical Concepts: Anti-censorship Principle vs Network Purification Theory
On June 6, the "Decentralization Declaration" signed by 31 Bitcoin core developers sent shockwaves through the community. This document, viewed as a "blockchain human rights act", directly states: "Filtering low-fee transactions is essentially establishing new censorship checkpoints." Developer representative Jameson Lopp emphasized on technical forums that Bitcoin's ultimate value lies in its anti-censorship nature, even if it means tolerating certain "non-consensus use cases".
Opposing voices came from the pragmatic camp led by Jan3 founder Samson Mow. They publicly denounced: "Allowing garbage transactions below 1 sat/vB is like permitting bicycles to occupy highways." Technical factions pointed out that the 2024 Runes protocol transaction surge once caused fees to spike 300 times, and now with protocol usage plummeting 98%, the network urgently needs an anti-abuse mechanism. Behind this debate lies the dispute over Bitcoin's dual identity as a "value storage" and "payment network".
III. Evolution of Miners' Survival Rules: Dark Pool Transactions and Computing Power Game
Facing the "Hunger Games" of 346,000 daily transactions, top mining enterprises began exploring unconventional survival strategies. The exposure of Marathon Digital's Slipstream private channel revealed the tip of the iceberg of miners' "dark pool transactions". This transaction mode, bypassing public mempool for direct packaging, allows miners to obtain stable cash flow but also reduces block producers to de facto "on-chain gatekeepers".
Interestingly, the 0.1 sat/vB ultra-low bowling ball transaction personally orchestrated by Mempool founder Mononaut was packaged by miners after lingering for 30 days. This performance art-like experiment exposed two cruel realities:
1) Current network bandwidth utilization is less than 40%, forcing miners to "eat anything";
2) Technical upgrades like SegWit, which increased block transaction capacity by 400%, have actually exacerbated computing power surplus.
IV. Future Projection: Ecological Reconstruction Under the Ice Layer
This liquidity crisis might become a watershed in Bitcoin's evolution. Miners might accelerate transformation towards energy arbitrage models, using low-cost electricity during high-water periods to digest excess computing power; developer camps might promote UTXO management protocol upgrades to improve on-chain efficiency through batch transactions; institutional investors' focus is shifting from mere price fluctuations to network health indicators.
In this bloodless computing power war, each participant is redefining Bitcoin's value boundaries. When Vitalik Buterin mentioned in a recent interview that "Bitcoin needs its own ZK-Rollups", this 16-year-old decentralized experiment stands at the crossroads of technological revolution and ideological adherence. Perhaps, as Satoshi Nakamoto said in the whitepaper: "System robustness is not about perfection, but about tolerance of imperfection."
