Bitcoin congestion has increased considerably in recent days. The levels are close to, but not higher than, those in days close to the halving of May 11, when the reward for mining was cut in half. This is the third-highest period of congestion so far this year.
On July 21 there were more than 83 thousand transactions in the mempool. This is, within the blockchain, the temporary memory where the transactions pending confirmation are stored.
Commission average also increases
As a consequence, there is also an increase in the amount of commissions in Bitcoin transactions. This is because miners first choose those that pay a higher commission, and those in a hurry to confirm their transactions decide to pay more, creating a snowball effect.
The average commission on July 21 was $ 3.55. This implies, measured in dollars, an increase of 438% from the recent low of July 12, when the average commission was USD 0.81.
A possible cause of the latter is the increased use of services such as LocalCryptos, which, by default, calculate very high commissions.
Also, as a German developer who presents himself on the Web under the pseudonym "0Xb10C" points out, a third of Bitcoin shipments are made from the online wallet of Blockchain.com.
0Xb10C shows that this data can be reached, which the company considered valid, based on common traces left by the transactions sent from that wallet, including:
Only P2PKH output addresses are used (those starting with 1, also known as "inherited").
SegWit and multi-signatures are not used.
With each transaction one or two outputs are created.
They all follow the BIP-69 protocol.
Blockchain.com users generally follow the rate recommendations that the platform offers them. It is seen in the following image, a large number of shipments that use exactly the rates suggested by this wallet. At the time of writing this article they were 89 sat / vbite (the “Regular” option) and 119 sat / vbite (the “Priority” option):
A large number of Bitcoin shipments are observed that pay exactly the Blockchain.com recommended rate of 89 AND 119 sat / vbyte, on April 22, 2020 at 22:00 UTC. The fee suggested by the wallet is indicated in yellow as “Regular”. Source: screenshot from https://mempool.observer/monitor/
Discussions, complaints and advice
The situation did not go unnoticed in the “crypto twitter” and, as usual, some promoters of altcoins used these numbers to criticize Bitcoin and, at the same time, praise its cult cryptocurrency, which gave rise to numerous debates.
This was done, for example, by a user who, for the aforementioned reasons, assured that "Bitcoin and Ethereum are not worth it." Instead, he proposed Digibyte, a cryptocurrency that he highlighted having instant transactions, 15-second block times, infinite scalability, minimal commissions, and decentralized products that work on his blockchain.
It did not take long for another person to respond, noting that Digibyte's low commissions are due to empty blocks, that infinite scalability does not exist and that altcoin is not decentralized.
Others used the network to express their displeasure, for example, the person who said she had waited 5 and a half hours for the confirmation of a transaction. "Bitcoin is like gold: it is valuable but not always easy to send," was one of the responses he received.
To conclude, it is important to clarify that although the average value of Bitcoin commissions is high, users can avoid paying excessive amounts.