Overcrowded Bitcoin mempool drives fees up by 350%

Fees in the Bitcoin network surged severalfold as its price rose to new all-time highs. Separately, unconfirmed transactions in the mempool have risen.

The previous rise in the average transaction fee was recorded at the end of October — peaking at $13.15. According to Blockchair, from December 13 to 18 the fee rose from $2.70 to $12.25.

Data: Blockchair.

On December 18, the number of unconfirmed transactions reached the 30-day high of 135,237. By the time of writing the indicator had fallen to 93,471.

Data: blockchain.com.

The mempool size stands at 54.62 MB.

Data: blockchain.com.

The mempool rejects transactions with fees below 2 satoshis per byte, according to mempoolspace. Priority is given to fees of 144 satoshis per byte.

🚨The mempool is now full again for nodes with default limits. The minimum fee for new transactions is currently 2 sats/vB, and any TX below this fee rate will now be purged/rejected from the mempool. For high priority transactions, we currently suggest a fee rate of 144 sats/vB. pic.twitter.com/Wzk9AEePWZ

— mempool (@mempoolspace) December 17, 2020

Earlier in November, fees in the Bitcoin network fell below $8, and unconfirmed transactions numbered just under 6,000.

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