The Ordinals mania flooding the Bitcoin network has spilled over to EVM chains as inscription activity goes parabolic.

Aggregate gas expenditure on EVM inscription transactions surged to an all-time high of $8.3 million this past Friday, per Dune Analytics. The Avalanche network accounted for the lion's share at over $5.6 million in daily gas consumed for inscribing NFTs on-chain.

EVM inscription volume has completely overwhelmed some networks. Activity on Avalanche and zkSync devoured more than half of all gas fees over the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, 73% of transactions on BNB Chain were attributed to inscriptions over the same period.

The inscription frenzy grew so intense on Arbitrum One that the network crashed for nearly 80 minutes on Thursday. Much like Bitcoin Ordinals, EVM inscriptions embed information in transaction data to mint unique non-fungible tokens without additional smart contracts.

Bitcoin has witnessed its own parabolic rise in inscription volume during this latest NFT mania. Nearly 280,000 unconfirmed BTC transactions have piled up in the mempool amid limited block space and spiking fees topping $37 per transfer.

While pioneer Adam Back argues the high network load will simply accelerate Layer 2 development, exorbitant fees currently make Bitcoin unusable for regular peer-to-peer payments.

The mania shows no signs of fading either, as some Ordinals collections like Bitcoin Frogs have individually exceeded the last 24 hours of trading volume across CryptoPunks, BAYC, MAYC, Azuki, and Moonbirds combined. Bitcoin Frogs also holds the highest market cap at $182 million among all Ordinals projects.