Confirmation became really fast, what has happened?

[erikalui]

I noticed it too. My transactions took 5 minutes to receive 4 confirmations each. Both had a fee of 300-400 sats and I was shocked to see 3-4 confirmations within 5 minutes. May be today there are way less transactions compared to other days. Below 9000 unconfirmed transactions: https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

[Russlenat]

I noticed it too. My transactions took 5 minutes to receive 4 confirmations each. Both had a fee of 300-400 sats and I was shocked to see 3-4 confirmations within 5 minutes. May be today there are way less transactions compared to other days. Below 9000 unconfirmed transactions: https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

That's true!, if they have less transaction for that they and I'm sure that transaction would last just a few minute even less amount of fee.

[pooya87]

confirmation times have always been really fast, the only thing that has changed is the amount of fee to pay in order to get a high priority transaction.
and that is because the spam attack has changed form. it now is adding something like noise only to the mempool. if you check there are still a couple of thousand transaction with 0 to 50 s/b fees in the mempool and majority of them are spam so it makes the mempool size to >11000 unconfirmed tx just to keep the number up but reduce the amount of fee.

it may be temporary to not let the fees go to crazy numbers and keep it at 200-300 s/b or it may be because of the scaling debate or both.

[kimmy724]

What could be behind the faster confirmation ? May be miners upgraded their ASICS or the fork is taking to an effect , these are just my speculations.

[n0ne]

I noticed it too. My transactions took 5 minutes to receive 4 confirmations each. Both had a fee of 300-400 sats and I was shocked to see 3-4 confirmations within 5 minutes. May be today there are way less transactions compared to other days. Below 9000 unconfirmed transactions: https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

That's quite interesting and developers team might have made changes in the system and that might be the cause. As stated decreased number of transactions is an common factor for the faster confirmation. Other than that there might be some updating to the network. Once the the transaction stuck to the network was found more than 90000 when sudden price increase took place.

[paul gatt]

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...)

You probably have the wrong idea, for bitcoin, the charge of each transaction is not the decisive factor for its speed. Transaction costs only contribute to the priority of your transaction. The new priority determines the speed of each transaction.

[pooya87]

What could be behind the faster confirmation ? May be miners upgraded their ASICS or the fork is taking to an effect , these are just my speculations.

if you read a couple of previous comments you can see the reason.
also bitcoin doesn't work like that, even if you upgrade ASICs or add thousands more nothing about confirmation changes on average. the difficult will adjust and block time and as a result number of them in the same period will stay the same.

[noictib]

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...)

Actually confirmation doesn't depend upon the single factor , but many things are associated with this that we never take into consideration .
First thing is the output and input which will decide that how much you need to pay the fee for the transaction ( which is very high in your case but still 159sat/byte is miracle for the confirmation in 15 minutes ) .
But here you should see that the timing when you made this transaction , currently the market of the Bitcoin is about at stable rate and is not going for the bulk transactions  (.that happened in the increase price due to bulk transaction ) ,in this thing a type of competition arise in the market to get confirm first when your bid price to confirm is high , but as currently no competition in the market to confirmation the transaction , so even at low fee you get success to get confirm in small time .

[iamTom123]

Well, I am quite elated to be reading your post. Though you might just be lucky this time, this is something we are all looking forward to especially after the August One deadline. It is really about time that Bitcoin can be free from the shackles that are putting some cap to its present growth. Bitcoin is meant to be fast, efficient and cheap as opposed to the traditional methods of transferring funds. It is what Bitcoin is for, right?

Right now, the whole market is watching what can happened prior, during and after August One. This can hopefully make or break Bitcoin but as one of the many small Bitcoin stakeholders we are wishing that things can really get better and not worse.

[imutlinda]

Indeed lately bitcoin transactions became a little faster. Probably due to the reduced number of people who transaction using bitcoin and prefer transaction using altcoin.

[RoommateAgreement]

Indeed lately bitcoin transactions became a little faster. Probably due to the reduced number of people who transaction using bitcoin and prefer transaction using altcoin.

but where do they "transact" these altcoins? from their wallet to exchange and vice versa?
because there is no other altcoin usage. there are some very rare cases, such as gambling sites and some tiny online shops with nearly no customers that accept some of the altcoins such as Dogecoin and Litecoin but that never contributes to any transactions.

for bitcoin apart from people sending from wallt to exchange and vice versa there is always a lot of other usages for purchasing a lot of goods from the internet, digital or physical.

[ladydark]

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...)

The same thing happened to me also.I sent 0.02 btc from my electrum wallet to my localbitcoins account.usually i used to set 0.0007 btc for faster transaction.But this time,i set only 0.0005 btc as transaction fee.But surprisingly,the transaction was confirmed within twenty minutes.Thats really great.

[haroldtee]

I noticed it too. My transactions took 5 minutes to receive 4 confirmations each. Both had a fee of 300-400 sats and I was shocked to see 3-4 confirmations within 5 minutes. May be today there are way less transactions compared to other days. Below 9000 unconfirmed transactions: https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

Oh OK!  Now this is getting interesting.I wonder if this has anything to do with the present scaling option if it is being gradually implemented unknowingly or maybe the transactions have gotten lower or what could it be?

[costina]

That's good why you asking about that? The more faster appeared, the more happier we have! So that, just keep doing our work and we can happy with a long time ^^

[shine1123]

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...)

Your fee is quite big actually, 0.0034. Are you sure is it 0.0034 or 0.00034, because 0.003 it's very big fee for a transaction imo. I usually use the fee maximum is 0.00034 and it can get confirmed fast, maybe around 10minutes-30minutes.

[Kakmakr]

The funds that were used to spam the network are now being used to organize events and to pay developers to work on the new "solution" or the funds simply ran out. The more people bitch about this, the quicker it will be back with us again, so it is better to leave the sleeping dogs. right? I hope some day, someone would have the balls to admit that it was them who spammed the network for whatever reason. ^grrrrrrrr^

[mmhaimhai]

I have also noticed that on my past transactions..and im happy that it happened because its realky a hassle when confirmations on blockchain took almost 3hrs before. Hope transaction fees on my chosen btc wallet get lower together with this.

[szpalata]

I have also noticed that on my past transactions..and im happy that it happened because its realky a hassle when confirmations on blockchain took almost 3hrs before. Hope transaction fees on my chosen btc wallet get lower together with this.

Well we are hoping for the best in the Bitcoin world especially now that August 1 is fast approaching, we are hopeful majority of our problems could be resolved by their prescribed solution on the day so that we can enjoy lower fees with quicker confirmations than it is now.

[Lordas]

Pay attention to last blocks how many transactions they include - just 400, 500, or 1000 and block sizes 200-700 kB only. Miners intentionally including only expensive transactions this way making artificial deficit and forcing ppl use higher transaction fees. They ruining all ecosystem they get profit from...

[Wind_FURY]

The spamming did stop. I sent some Bitcoins today with a regular .0001 fee and it confirmed in less than an hour.

Maybe there was an agreement taking place from behind the scenes between the big shots of Bitcoin? Another surprising event is happening. MASF Segwit is gaining more support.

https://blockchain.info/charts/bip-9-segwit