The number of unconfirmed transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain has essentially been cleared to little over 1,000 transactions this week, after the hashrate on the flagship cryptocurrency’s network jumped by 19.6%.
CryptoCompare data shows that the hashrate on the Bitcoin network – the computing power used to secure it – hit an all-time high of 144 million TH/s before plunging to 106 million TH/s earlier this month. Over the last few days, the hashrate has been surging, however, to over 1280 million TH/s.
The large increase in hashrate saw the average time for a block to be found on the Bitcoin network to drop from its 10-minute average to 7.7 minutes, according to BitInfoCharts, which meant that more transactions could be included in each block.
Each BTC block has a limited amount of space in which transactions are included. This means that transactions that aren’t included in a block go to the memory pool (mempool), which contains the total number of unconfirmed transactions. The mempool, according to Blockchain.com, earlier this month had over 127,000 transactions in it.
The increased hashrate and lowered block times helped it get cleared earlier this month. At press time, there are now little over 9,000 transactions on the mempool.
The drop in unconfirmed transactions also meant that the average transaction fee paid per transaction started dropping, from about $13 last month to $7.8 at press time. The lack of unconfirmed transactions also meant the median confirmation time for BTC transactions dropped from a 25-minute high to 10.1 minutes.
It’s worth noting that given the sudden hashrate increase, bitcoin’s mining difficulty is also expected to increase in the next adjustment, in order to ensure blocks on the cryptocurrency’s network are found at 10-minute intervals.
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