The surging activity surrounding inscription protocols on networks supporting Ethereum Virtual Machine smart contracts has died down from an initial frenzy just a couple of weeks ago.<\/p>\n
Data<\/a>\u00a0from Dune Analytics shows that inscriptions continue to represent an outsized share of activity on Avalanche and Ethereum\u2019s Goerli testnet, but have since died down on leading Layer 2 networks in addition to the Polygon PoS sidechain and BNB Chain.<\/p>\n Over the past seven days, inscriptions accounted for 77% of transactions on Avalanche, 67% on Goerli, 10% on Base, 7.5% on ZkSync Era, less than 5% on BNB Chain and OP Mainnet, and just 1% on Polygon PoS Chain.<\/p>\n For comparison, inscriptions made up between 50% and 75% of transactions executed on Gnosis, Arbitrum, and ZkSync Era, and more than 40% on BNB Chain and Polygon PoS Chain in\u00a0mid-December<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Further, more than 77% of Avalanche\u2019s weekly network transaction fees were spent on inscriptions roughly three weeks ago, with 39% of gas spent on ZkSync Era, 18% on Arbitrum, 16% on Gnosis, and 13% on BNB Chain also funding inscription transactions at the time.<\/p>\n That figure has since dropped to 28% on Avalanche, 3.5% on ZkSync Era, and less than 1% of fees spent on Arbitrum, Gnosis, and BNB Chain.<\/p>\n The decline in inscription activity follows an initial surge as inscription protocols proliferated across EVM-compatible chains in recent weeks.<\/p>\n Inscriptions were invented in January as a coding technique for creating pseudo-NFTs on Bitcoin, which does not support the smart contract functionality typically used to create non-fungible tokens on EVM chains. The tokens are created by inscribing data to the smallest denomination of a network token (i.e. a single Bitcoin satoshi), meaning inscriptions are less gas-intensive than NFTs, which require smart contract executions.<\/p>\n Transaction fees on Near, Polygon, and Fantom rocketed 4,500%, 6,900%, and nearly 9,000% respectively amid a flurry of activity following the launch of native inscription protocols in late November. <\/p>\n![\"the-defiant\"](\"https:\/\/thedefiant.io\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.sanity.io%2Fimages%2F6oftkxoa%2Fproduction%2F7310581191f2022415ed28a7dbe2169ddc4fadb1-943x415.png&w=828&q=100\")