Confirmation became really fast, what has happened?

[bitart]

Nowdays I've got used to the fact that bitcoin transactions were just hanging in the mempool for quite a long time, but today I just realized that something has happened.
I've started a transaction of 0,05 BTC (not a huge amount) with the possible lowest (and slowest) low-prio fee, and I thought that it will take days to get confirmed (or at least one day). The fee was about 0,0034... BTC (159 sat/byte).
In an hour (or less), it was confirmed, the first 4 confirmation was done in 15 minutes. I was totally surprised. I've checked the mempool later on, it has been settled, it seems. These are the first few weeks since the beginning of May when the mempool isn't full.
I don't know what has happened, but it seems promising. (Or not, if it's in connection with the August 1st deadline, but who knows... I don't, but if anybody knows, please help me to understand what is going on behing the scenes...)

[unamis76]

Time until first confirmation isn't only fee dependent. Priority also plays a role. You might want to read up on it here

[haroldtee]

Nowdays I've got used to the fact that bitcoin transactions were just hanging in the mempool for quite a long time, but today I just realized that something has happened.
I've started a transaction of 0,05 BTC (not a huge amount) with the possible lowest (and slowest) low-prio fee, and I thought that it will take days to get confirmed (or at least one day). The fee was about 0,0034... BTC (159 sat/byte).
In an hour (or less), it was confirmed, the first 4 confirmation was done in 15 minutes. I was totally surprised. I've checked the mempool later on, it has been settled, it seems. These are the first few weeks since the beginning of May when the mempool isn't full.
I don't know what has happened, but it seems promising. (Or not, if it's in connection with the August 1st deadline, but who knows... I don't, but if anybody knows, please help me to understand what is going on behing the scenes...)

That isn't a very low fee for the transaction you did mate. Moreover it is possible there may be no much congestion when you made the transaction, hence the reason why it was quite fast but all the same 0.0034 isn't a small transaction fees.

[BillyBobZorton]

Simple: Bitmain and Roger Ver have stopped spamming the network. If you look at the mempool graph it was clear it was just another attack by the big blockers to bitch and moan about high fees and confirmation times.

Just wait for the hardfork drums to start making noise again, they will turn their spam machines again to try to force support for their altcoin.

[Xavofat]

A scaling solution seems to have been reached, so spammers decided to stop, meaning that you can now get confirmations with no fees or almost no fees.

Plus the hype has died down lately.

[n691309]

I think you got lucky at that time because there were mined fast 3 blocks, the same "situation" is now where 4 blocks were found within 8 minutes, and I haven't seen so many blocks to be found within a short period of time. @BillyBobZorton seems that when Bitmain "pauses" a bit the network gets back to the normality.

[European Central Bank]

miners stopped spamming the network in an attempt to force bigger blocks.

[CyberKuro]

Nowdays I've got used to the fact that bitcoin transactions were just hanging in the mempool for quite a long time, but today I just realized that something has happened.
I've started a transaction of 0,05 BTC (not a huge amount) with the possible lowest (and slowest) low-prio fee, and I thought that it will take days to get confirmed (or at least one day). The fee was about 0,0034... BTC (159 sat/byte).
In an hour (or less), it was confirmed, the first 4 confirmation was done in 15 minutes. I was totally surprised. I've checked the mempool later on, it has been settled, it seems. These are the first few weeks since the beginning of May when the mempool isn't full.
I don't know what has happened, but it seems promising. (Or not, if it's in connection with the August 1st deadline, but who knows... I don't, but if anybody knows, please help me to understand what is going on behing the scenes...)

This maybe like silence before the storm, look at https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions and it just 9K unconfirmed transaction waiting for included into next block. I think you should lowered the fee around 100-120 sat/byte and it will be confirmed as well. Maybe spam transactions has been stopped to convince the community that 1Mb block size without Segwit and we just doing it fine. But, I prefer to segwit should be activated and throw all this problems as we may see bitcoin leap to over $4000 after August 1^st.

[dothebeats]

Mempool is not overcrowded with transactions, meaning almost every transaction can get cobfirmed within the next block or so. It seems like they have stopped their spamming efforts to shove bigger blocks into our asses. Seems fair enough and great for everybody, I guess.

[aakashsangwan]

Mempool is not overcrowded with transactions, meaning almost every transaction can get cobfirmed within the next block or so. It seems like they have stopped their spamming efforts to shove bigger blocks into our asses. Seems fair enough and great for everybody, I guess.

So now the problem of increasing the block size and the implementation of segwit should be kept on hold and the network should return to normal keeping the bullshit behind and focusing more on the mass adaption.

[Kabul]

well maybe it is because there are not many people interested in bitcoin anymore. AS you can see, the price is very low right now and people do not buy more bitcoin after the ransomware anymore. Well, let's wait for segwit2x and the results will more apparent

[European Central Bank]

AS you can see, the price is very low right now

are you looking at a different bitcoin than me? the price is less than 20% below its all time high.

[OROBTC]

Mempool is not overcrowded with transactions, meaning almost every transaction can get cobfirmed within the next block or so. It seems like they have stopped their spamming efforts to shove bigger blocks into our asses. Seems fair enough and great for everybody, I guess.

So now the problem of increasing the block size and the implementation of segwit should be kept on hold and the network should return to normal keeping the bullshit behind and focusing more on the mass adaption.

Actually, IMO, they should adopt both SegWit and an increased block size!  My reasoning is that spamming could start again at any moment, so BOTH measures should help keep the trx flow going through the blocks moving along better.

Mass adoption right now might lead to more crowding (higher fees, slower confirmations), I think they should SOLVE the scaling problem(s) ASAP and maybe find a way to STOP the spammers.

[TryNinja]

1 - Today is Sunday, which means we got way less transactions. At the moment I'm writing this, there are ~8700 unconfirmed transactions:
https://blockchain.info/pt/unconfirmed-transactions

2 - Someone stopped spamming the network and the mempool has a lot more space available. Check this graph:
https://blockchain.info/pt/charts/mempool-size

The average price per byte is still pretty expensive compared to the good old days as you can see on https://bitcoinfees.21.co

[unamis76]

Any evidence that the recent congestion has been due to spam attacks? Big blockers want big blocks in order to be able to have transactions confirmed in the next block with low fees... Spamming the network would be making sure they don't get exactly what they want. Sounds counterproductive.

[FasTroy]

well maybe it is because there are not many people interested in bitcoin anymore. AS you can see, the price is very low right now and people do not buy more bitcoin after the ransomware anymore. Well, let's wait for segwit2x and the results will more apparent

I don't think that many people are not interested in bitcoin anymore. I think because miners stop spamming the network. Today morning i tried to send some btc to my friend i put 0.55$, It confirmed too fast, I did not believe that, It confirmed too fast and with low fees.

[Meuh6879]

[Vohoanghiep]

Nowdays I've got used to the fact that bitcoin transactions were just hanging in the mempool for quite a long time, but today I just realized that something has happened.
I've started a transaction of 0,05 BTC (not a huge amount) with the possible lowest (and slowest) low-prio fee, and I thought that it will take days to get confirmed (or at least one day). The fee was about 0,0034... BTC (159 sat/byte).
In an hour (or less), it was confirmed, the first 4 confirmation was done in 15 minutes. I was totally surprised. I've checked the mempool later on, it has been settled, it seems. These are the first few weeks since the beginning of May when the mempool isn't full.
I don't know what has happened, but it seems promising. (Or not, if it's in connection with the August 1st deadline, but who knows... I don't, but if anybody knows, please help me to understand what is going on behing the scenes...)

I think the increased fee per transaction has contributed to faster transaction time. Besides, with the response of the community, the engineers, the creators of Bitcoin, have improved the speed of the transactions to make Bitcoin more stable and more developed.

[Iranus]

Any evidence that the recent congestion has been due to spam attacks? Big blockers want big blocks in order to be able to have transactions confirmed in the next block with low fees... Spamming the network would be making sure they don't get exactly what they want. Sounds counterproductive.

Spamming the network gives a sense of urgency.  It gives miners an incentive to reach consensus (or other miners, if there's a certain agenda behind it).

However, I also don't buy into the narrative that it's a spam attack from "big blockers"... I feel that almost the same justification could be given to claim that people are doing this to push the LN and offchain transactions. 

There's no way of telling if it was an unknown force pushing for any solution at all, or if it was a group with a specific agenda on a specific side of the argument.  Or if there is, I haven't seen it yet.
But there definitely was a spam attack.  There were a couple of addresses I was pointed to in that time with >100,000 dust transactions of the same amount, relentlessly in short time frames.

[European Central Bank]

But there definitely was a spam attack.  There were a couple of addresses I was pointed to in that time with >100,000 dust transactions of the same amount, relentlessly in short time frames.

i've read somewhere that some of the stuff being tagged as spam was actually bitfury with some sort of notary project. i can't remember what it was exactly.

but yes, i believe most of it had little or nothing to do with real world transactions and alot to do with trying to force a scaling solution. it could've been from any party but miners are the obvious one.