# blockspacelabs.com

Blockspace Labs: "Research and development for Bitcoin blockspace."

URL: https://blockspace.wiki/projects/blockspacelabs.com/

Status: live (since 2026-10-20 08:32 UTC)
Site: https://blockspacelabs.com

## What it is

[Blockspace Labs](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/blockspace-labs/) is, in its own words, "research and development for
Bitcoin blockspace", a part of [Blockspace Holdings](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/blockspace-holdings/). Its card on
block.space/projects reads "Research and development (R&D)."

Its projects are cards with a status. The Live ones run today on
Blockspace Holdings' own Bitcoin node and indexers:
the [sub-1 sat/vB relay](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/sub-1-sat-vb-relay/), blockspace.to and its [spent sats](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/spent-sats/), the
[Blockspace Token Indexer](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/bti/), the byte census, who holds blockspace, and
the blockspace price. The Research ones are descriptive studies: 4 MB
transaction relay, blockspace expansion policy, what to store on Bitcoin,
the policy observatory, low-fee propagation, the sub-1 sat/vB share,
[full-RBF](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/full-rbf/) in practice, the witness discount by protocol, the envelope
taxonomy, inscription permanence, [lost sats](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/lost-sats/),
[cursed inscriptions](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/cursed-inscription/), testing the BVT, Blockspace
Value Theory, fork and reorg watch, and Litecoin and Dogecoin blockspace.
Blockspace Value Theory is, in the site's words, "a living document and an
untested thesis".

## Status

Live at https://blockspacelabs.com since 2026-10-20 08:32 UTC (as of
2026-10-20). The research cards are descriptive "for now": there are no
results pages and no tooling behind them yet.

## How it works

The site is one static page with no outside assets and no scripts. Its
figures come from Blockspace Holdings' own Bitcoin node and indexers: the
Bitcoin node (mempool and network info), the ord server behind
blockspace.to, block.space's APIs and the buy board. The figures are
refreshed every hour. A source that fails keeps its last reading with its
own "as of".

## Key figures

The node's relay policy, as of block 972,320, 2026-10-20 12:17:07 UTC:

- node: /Satoshi:28.2.0/;
- [minimum relay fee](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/fee-floor/): 0 sat/vB; incremental relay
  fee: 1 sat/vB;
- full-RBF: on; maximum mempool: 300 MB.

In the Labs reading of 2026-10-20 09:07 UTC, 38,265 of the
38,991 transactions in the node's mempool paid below 1 sat/vB.

From ord, as of block 972,320, 2026-10-20 12:17:07 UTC: 2,895,844,904 [lost sats](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/lost-sats/);
472,043 cursed and 127,698,141 blessed inscriptions.

## Glossary

- **Blockspace Holdings**: The holding company behind block.space and every project listed on block.space/projects; its own page is blockspace.holdings. The owner named it "Blockspace Holdings" on 2026-10-20.
- **Blockspace Holdings' node and indexers**: The Bitcoin full node, the ord server and the BTI indexer that Blockspace Holdings runs itself. block.space, blockspace.to and this wiki read their figures from them, and each figure carries the block height and time it was read.
- **Blockspace Labs**: The research and development arm of Blockspace Holdings, at blockspacelabs.com: "research and development for Bitcoin blockspace". blockspace.to is a Blockspace Labs product.
- **BTI**: The Blockspace Token Indexer, the instrument that produces every number the block.space meter displays. It counts the bytes, catalogues the operations, and writes the books.
- **cursed inscription**: An inscription ord numbers apart from the blessed ones, with a negative number (such as #−10,508). ord /status counts the two separately.
- **fee floor**: The lowest fee rate a node will relay and keep in its mempool, set by minrelaytxfee. Bitcoin Core's default floor is 1 sat/vB; [Blockspace Holdings' own Bitcoin node](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/blockspace-holdings-node-and-indexers/) runs with minrelaytxfee=0.
- **full-RBF**: A relay policy setting of a Bitcoin node (fullrbf), about replacing unconfirmed transactions. [Blockspace Holdings' own Bitcoin node](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/blockspace-holdings-node-and-indexers/) runs with it on; the Labs study "Full-RBF in practice" proposes to count the replacements its mempool sees.
- **lost sats**: Sats that coinbase transactions never claimed, so they exist in no output. ord's /status counts them.
- **spent sats**: The sat ranges of outputs that have already been spent. The ord fork behind blockspace.to runs with --index-spent-sats, so a spent output still answers with its sat ranges; an ord without that flag does not.
- **standard transaction**: A transaction Bitcoin Core's policy will relay, as opposed to one that is merely valid. One limit: a standard transaction weighs at most 400,000 WU (about 100,000 vB); larger ones are non-standard: default nodes will not relay them, but one can still reach a block by arrangement with a miner, like the 3,969,429-byte inscription in block 873,893.
- **sub-1 sat/vB relay**: Relaying and keeping transactions that pay less than 1 sat/vB, the default floor of Bitcoin Core. Blockspace Labs' node does it by running stock Bitcoin Core with minrelaytxfee=0; it is a Live Labs project.

## FAQ

### What is Blockspace Labs?

The research and development arm of [Blockspace Holdings](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/blockspace-holdings/), at blockspacelabs.com. Its site lists research projects as cards, each marked Live or Research, with figures measured on [Blockspace Holdings' own Bitcoin node and indexers](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/blockspace-holdings-node-and-indexers/).

### Does the Labs node really relay transactions below 1 sat/vB?

Yes. It runs stock Bitcoin Core with a minimum relay fee of 0 sat/vB (as of block 972,320, 2026-10-20 12:17:07 UTC), so it relays and keeps them. See [sub-1 sat/vB relay](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/sub-1-sat-vb-relay/).

### Does it relay 4 MB transactions?

No. Stock Bitcoin Core treats a transaction over 400,000 weight units (100 kvB) as [non-standard](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/standard-transaction/), so 4 MB relay needs a patched node. In Blockspace Holdings' words it is "just a research project".

### Are the research projects producing results?

Not yet, as of 2026-10-20. In Blockspace Holdings' words, the Labs projects stay "descriptive research projects for now". The cards say what each study is and what data it uses; nothing is built behind them.

### How is blockspace.to related to Labs?

blockspace.to is a Blockspace Labs product: an ord explorer and indexer that also tracks [spent sats](https://blockspace.wiki/glossary/spent-sats/).

Sources:

- The project list at block.space/projects · https://block.space/projects
- Blockspace Holdings records
- The blockspacelabs.com page (index.html) · https://blockspacelabs.com
- Blockspace Labs facts (data/facts.json) · https://blockspacelabs.com
- ord /status (the blockspace.to ord server) · https://blockspace.to/status

Live figures: ord as of block 972,320, 2026-10-20 12:17:07 UTC; relay as of block 972,320, 2026-10-20 12:17:07 UTC

Updated: 2026-10-20
