Could someone explain why Mempool is flooded with strange transactions?

[CadmeusCain]

Hi everyone

Something weird I've noticed that I don't understand. On 4 June that the Mempool spiked to around 50mb. And now again today (7 June), the Mempool spiked with about 50mb of 1sat/b transactions. You can see this on a Mempool visualizer: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,1w

From Twitter, Reddit etc. I gathered that the last spike was mostly likely some large players consolidating all of their really tiny inputs. In fact, the UTXO count does show that a large number of outputs were consolidated around that time: https://blockchain.info/charts/utxo-count?timespan=30days

But this time, as I dig into the Blocks, I see really bizarre transactions like this one:

https://blockchain.info/tx/d810ae11462d21ee076856657631a4c9819e9e70bd43f499806eaeb8d87e63f9

Some dude is spamming amounts from the same address repeatedly within in the same transaction. In fact, if you track that address specifically, you see some very strange transactions where similar amounts are being sent back and forth:

https://blockchain.info/address/3HyiTaTq2DdJBV4nChPXPuQPqbv9iCXotx

So what's happening? Is someone spamming the network? Or is someone just going to great lengths to mask and mix their inputs and outputs to give chain analysts a headache?

Just now, I spotted even more weirdness. A block that just got mined by Antpool contains 126 transactions, filling up mostly on cheap spam transactions when higher fee transactions are already in the queue:

https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000000308bb60ee7b071c1b03a8e2b7fd7bd0edb6115663c214a

So Antpool overlooked some 30sat+ transactions to include this beauty (same address, and large scripts):

https://blockchain.info/tx/fbf5e89427a8b5bcf4f96b1226c82b26107370bc859da5ec48fad5c3568a6921

So what exactly is going on? Is someone intentionally trying to clog the Mempool with garbage, and then mine it ahead of other transactions? Is this an attack?

[bitart]

Nice catch, seems strange
You can't be sure what happened unless you know who the adresses belong to.
It's also possible that someone has paid Antpool to accelerate this transaction, this is the reason why they had not choosen the other transactions with higher fees because they had their profit from elsewhere already...
So it's possible that someone has consolidated the dust into one address, to be cheaper to use it later on, but anyway it looks weird...

[Wind_FURY]

Hi everyone

Something weird I've noticed that I don't understand. On 4 June that the Mempool spiked to around 50mb. And now again today (7 June), the Mempool spiked with about 50mb of 1sat/b transactions. You can see this on a Mempool visualizer: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,1w

From Twitter, Reddit etc. I gathered that the last spike was mostly likely some large players consolidating all of their really tiny inputs. In fact, the UTXO count does show that a large number of outputs were consolidated around that time: https://blockchain.info/charts/utxo-count?timespan=30days

Yes I heard about it too, and seeing that the transactions were mined despite fees paid were 1 sat per byte is amazing.

But this time, as I dig into the Blocks, I see really bizarre transactions like this one:

https://blockchain.info/tx/d810ae11462d21ee076856657631a4c9819e9e70bd43f499806eaeb8d87e63f9

Some dude is spamming amounts from the same address repeatedly within in the same transaction. In fact, if you track that address specifically, you see some very strange transactions where similar amounts are being sent back and forth:

https://blockchain.info/address/3HyiTaTq2DdJBV4nChPXPuQPqbv9iCXotx

So what's happening? Is someone spamming the network? Or is someone just going to great lengths to mask and mix their inputs and outputs to give chain analysts a headache?

Just now, I spotted even more weirdness. A block that just got mined by Antpool contains 126 transactions, filling up mostly on cheap spam transactions when higher fee transactions are already in the queue:

https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000000308bb60ee7b071c1b03a8e2b7fd7bd0edb6115663c214a

So Antpool overlooked some 30sat+ transactions to include this beauty (same address, and large scripts):

https://blockchain.info/tx/fbf5e89427a8b5bcf4f96b1226c82b26107370bc859da5ec48fad5c3568a6921

So what exactly is going on? Is someone intentionally trying to clog the Mempool with garbage, and then mine it ahead of other transactions? Is this an attack?

We cannot be sure for now. Let's wait for the blockchain detectives to do their magic.

But this could be another cause for drama. It is never too quite in Bitcoin land. Haha.