Amid continued highs in trading and price, Bitcoin’s transaction backlog is giving out warning signs of a network already at capacity.
Data from Blockchain.info uploaded to Twitter by Chain engineer Tony Arcieri showed constant spikes in the Bitcoin mempool, the vat of unprocessed transactions waiting for confirmation.
“The Bitcoin mempool, a buffer of unprocessed transactions, has been flaring up a lot now that the system is at capacity, only 4tps average,” Arcieri commented.
The Bitcoin mempool, a buffer of unprocessed transactions, has been flaring up a lot now that the system is at capacity (only 4tps average) pic.twitter.com/6hoYyzEKCd
— Tony Arcieri (@bascule) February 27, 2017
Notably, the size of such transactions peaked around Feb. 23 at just under 75 mln bytes, before coming down sharply to stand at 8.5 mln Monday.
Aggressive trading from China and elsewhere on platforms such as LocalBitcoins, as well as the excitement surrounding the potential approval of the first Bitcoin ETF next month, are two major factors likely contributing to the recurring backlog.
The debate about how to resolve Bitcoin’s capacity woes meanwhile is still going on, with well-known faces battling to convince the community of the validity of a particular solution.
On Sunday, Bitcoin Jesus Roger Ver - a proponent of bigger blocks and opponent of the alternative Segregated Witness technology - went head to head with analyst Tone Vays in an edition of The Crypto Show radio program.
According to the latest statistics, support for Segregated Witness is now higher than at any previous point among mining pools.