Status: RESEARCH NOTE (2026-08-11) · Program: Bitcoin Resource Accounting
Companion: research/working-paper.md, research/cost-to-flood.md
Source: live SCCR measurements (model-spec v2.1.0, N=32K census)
The Storage Cost Coverage Ratio, as measured on the canonical daily feed
(data/sccr_history.json), is falling — from ~0.28 to 0.238 across the
measured days. Transaction fees are covering less of the modeled storage cost
that confirmed data imposes on the network.
| Date | Avg SCCR | Blocks sampled | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-02 | 0.2243 | 153 | data/sccr_history.json |
| 2026-08-03 | 0.2840 | 137 | data/sccr_history.json |
| 2026-08-04 | 0.2611 | 159 | data/sccr_history.json |
| 2026-08-10 | 0.2379 | 145 | data/sccr_history.json |
Caveat — early series, small n. This is a **4-point series over a 9-day span
with a data gap Aug 5–9** (the daily tracker was installed mid-series). The
~35% relative swing (0.28 → 0.24) is a *directional signal from a young
series*, not a settled trend. We publish it as a live measurement with its
uncertainty visible — the method and code are public so anyone can reproduce
every digit. As the daily tracker accumulates clean points, the trendline
will firm up.
The SCCR is the ratio of fees paid to the estimated 10-year storage cost. When
it falls, the unpriced externality is growing — each block's data costs the
network more relative to what the fee market pays for it.
This is the direction the paper's thesis predicts in a cooling fee market:
costs" widens
This is also the attacker-side implication from cost-to-flood.md: in a
low-fee regime, flooding the chain gets *cheaper per byte* while the storage it
imposes stays the same — the leverage ratio rises as fees fall.
We are not claiming this is broken. The SCCR is a measurement of a pricing gap;
a falling value is the model working as intended — **tracking the growing
unpriced residue** that the paper exists to quantify. The trend is the
contribution: the externality is *not static*, it moves with the fee market,
and right now it is moving away from coverage.
If fees keep falling and the ratio keeps dropping, at what point does the
unpriced storage cost become a *binding* constraint on node operation? The
paper's §5.4 knife-edge (the strong claim inverts at N≈49K or BTC≈$77K) and
cost-to-flood.md (leverage 3.0×) bracket this — the falling trend moves
*along* those bounds.
DONE: the trend note; the data is live-measured daily.
LEFT: wire this as the research headline on the site (Data Story / Articles);
watch the trend daily (the agent captures it).
*Bitcoin Sahi Research — The Externality Is Growing (SCCR trend note), 2026-08-11.*