Bitcoin network congestion caused by Rune Protocol

The Bitcoin network is very congested due to transactions taking place after the Bitcoin Halving.
The recent halving reduced the amount of new bitcoin miners receive when they mine a new block, from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.
The mining rewards are made by the subsidy (today 3.125 BTC per block) + the fees paid by the users to include the transaction into a block, called onchain fees.
A new protocol called Rune (https://docs.bitcoinrune.xyz/), which creates non-fungible tokens on Bitcoin, start minting these tokens at block 840,000 causing a massive spike in onchain fees.

This is a BTC network issue and is not related to Edge. Many other wallets and services have halted transactions or are getting transactions stuck as a result.
This recent surge in use of Bitcoin is bringing fees to a level we haven't seen since 2017.

What happens with your transaction?

If you already sent a transaction before block 840,000 mined on Apr 20, 2024 00:09:27 UTC, your transaction will either return to your wallet or confirm, however it may take a very long time, days to months.
If you are setting a swap from BTC to another crypto in Exchange scene, you may see a high value in Network Fees. If you want to swap to BTC, you may see a very low amount of bitcoin to be received.

If you are planning to send a transaction, you may see a very high fee or even "Insufficient BTC" error, if your balance is lower than the average fee.
You can check the current fee levels here: https://mempool.space/.

What's our suggestion?

If you are not in a hurry and you don't need to move a high amount of bitcoin, our suggestion is to simply wait for the situation to be back to normal or to keep monitoring the average fee and send only if you think the required fee is suitable for your transaction.

Note: Edge does NOT earn from onchain fees. They are ALL paid to the miners of the Bitcoin network.