BTC unconfirmed transaction queue size reaches two-year high

The decrease in miner activity has led to an increase in the Bitcoin mempool tomaximum levels since January 2018 and the growth of commissions.

Mempool growth is due to the fact that the average intervalbetween the creation of blocks increased, and this affects the capacity of the blockchain and, accordingly, the speed of transaction confirmation. Mempool is a pool of all bitcoin transactions that have been transferred to the network but not yet included in the block.

Mempool unconfirmed transaction sequenceto be added to the next mined block, it is usually determined by miners based on the size of the commission. Thus, low commission transactions can remain in mempool for a long time before being confirmed.

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The average seven-day mempool size is currentlytime is 67.87 megabytes, which was the highest value since January 2018. The size of mempool has more than doubled in a week. According to Blockchain.com, the average time a transaction was included in a block increased from 7 to 16 minutes.

Such a significant increase in the numberunconfirmed transactions may be the result of a decrease in the activity of Bitcoin miners after halving the reward to 6.25 BTC, which occurred this month. The shortage of electricity in the Chinese province of Sichuan also affected. Due to the fact that miners leave the network, it takes longer to mine blocks, and this slows down the network. According to BitInfoCharts, while a few weeks ago blocks were mined approximately every 10 minutes, now this happens on average in 14 minutes.

As a result of increased competition for a place inIn the block, the average BTC transaction fee has grown in recent weeks and now stands at $ 6.64. This figure is also approaching its two-year high. At the same time, according to Bitinfocharts, on May 8, the average transaction fee was $ 3.19, which was the highest value since July 2019. The previous fee growth was recorded on April 30 - then the BTC transaction fee was $ 2.94.

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