[Oct 2026]Mempool empty, Consolidate your small inputs @0.25 sat/vbyte

[Cricktor]

I strongly believe your local mempool.space instance doesn't see quite a bunch of transactions which are currently visible in mempools of my own node and the public mempool of https://mempool.space. Are you sure your node's mempool accepts transactions below 1sat/vB?

This is what my local instance of mempool.space app shows for my node:


This is what public mempool.space shows, maybe just a few minutes later than my screenshot above:


Past 30 day of mempool.jhoenicke.de:


Another mempool history from https://chainquery.com/reports/mempool:


My node and mempool transaction count history from Fulcrum Electrum server logs also have the "low waterlevel" from around end of August until around Sept. 16^th, 2016 ~11:xx UTC when mempool tx count hovered in the ballpark around 30k and rose within two hours to around 80k tx.

[logfiles]

I strongly believe your local mempool.space instance doesn't see quite a bunch of transactions which are currently visible in mempools of my own node and the public mempool of https://mempool.space. Are you sure your node's mempool accepts transactions below 1sat/vB?

You might be right. I am using https://mempool.bitmixlist.org because for some reason,  the main website (mempool.space) sometimes does not load on at all even when I use the VPN service. It goes on for even weeks and then works for one day and then it's off again 

So when I saw the nearly empty mempool, i thought we were back to those old times.

[Cricktor]

I am using https://mempool.bitmixlist.org ...

So when I saw the nearly empty mempool, i thought we were back to those old times.

Ah, OK, so it's not your local instance but IIRC NotATether's public https://mempool.bitmixlist.org. I wonder why his mempool is so "empty" when mine and official https://mempool.space's are pretty close together and have a few tenthousand tx more.

With the current state of mempool having enough transactions to fill roughly a backlog of around 40 blocks, the topic title saying "Mempool empty" isn't quite accurate if I'm in nitpicking mode. Depends on the perspective, I guess. With a floor value of 0.3sat/vB the candidate block regularly "dries out", see below screenshot when pink horizontal line is crossed under:


With 0.1sat/vB minimum relay feerate I don't expect the mempool to ever truely dry out significantly so that one could call it really "empty".

There will always be some inscription/Runestone/whatever shenanigans to vomit their crap into mempools. It stinks...

[NotATether]

I am using https://mempool.bitmixlist.org ...

So when I saw the nearly empty mempool, i thought we were back to those old times.

Ah, OK, so it's not your local instance but IIRC NotATether's public https://mempool.bitmixlist.org. I wonder why his mempool is so "empty" when mine and official https://mempool.space's are pretty close together and have a few tenthousand tx more.

There was some maintenance last night that took down the explorer and electrs for a few hours, but that isn't the reason mine shows a lower tx count.

Apparently, the missing transactions are almost entirely Runes and other extremely low-paying datacarriers that a default node does not see due to eviction policies, but mempool.space's config chooses to display for some reason.

Mempool.space uses a huge maxmempool value, whereas mine is running 31.1 with the default 2-week eviction.

So what you see on BitMixList's mempool is actually the "true" mempool volume over two weeks.

[Cricktor]

Mempool.space uses a huge maxmempool value, whereas mine is running 31.1 with the default 2-week eviction.

So what you see on BitMixList's mempool is actually the "true" mempool volume over two weeks.

My Core 31.1 node has explicitly the setting mempoolexpiry=336 which translates to eviction after 14 days, same as your node. So, I don't think transaction eviction plays a significant role in the difference of your and my mempool.

I have maxmempool=512 and persistmempool=1 in my bitcoin.conf, not sure if this could play a role. This way it repopulates my mempool pretty fast if my Linux box needs just a reboot because of some updates that mandate one. I prefer it that way.

Another of my Core nodes has a larger mempool, maxmempool=1024, but at current "waterlevel" this doesn't make a difference. Both have nearly the same tx count in their mempools and are also connected to each other.

Anyway, I don't know an obvious reason or setting that stands out to explain the difference. There are a few other settings where I can think of some influence, but I'm not sure if it's really important.

If it is for you, let me know and I can disclose most of my settings in my bitcoin.conf file.