Mempool increasing again (29MB)

[arnoudk]

The mempool (number of transactions sent, but not yet confirmed in a block) is increasing again. It seems to have peaked at just over 29 MB and is now decreasing again.

29 MB itself is not a lot of data, but the mempool is kept in RAM memory - and too many transactions could cause a problem for lightweight nodes if it were to increase too much. However, I don't expect any nodes will have an issue with 29 MB of transaction data... so no need to worry.

As a block is currently 1 MB every 10 minutes (on average), it would take 29 blocks, or 290 minutes, to process this backlog. Assuming no additional transactions get sent which of course will happen.



Does anyone know: are these genuine transactions? Or is this another spam attack?

[BitcoinXio]

The number of daily bitcoin transactions doesn't seem to be abnormally high or close to "spam" levels that we've seen in the past, such as last summer, but they are inching up and up as time progresses, which is indicative of a healthy market (people using bitcoin as a currency). The problem is now becoming we are hitting our ceiling of max block sizes more often, which is more often causing these backlogs.

[bitkilo]

I checked this myself last night after a transaction took about 2 hours to receive 1 confirmation.
I don't think we are seeing another spam attack and if so it is only a small one, the spike in transactions did not rise fast enough for a directed tx spam attack IMO.

[arnoudk]

I'm also not seeing the normal telltale signs of a spam attack. This means that these could be legitimate transactions.

In that case I am really glad that there appears to be a solution to the blocksize debate in bitcoin classic. No second too early