Since the number of transactions nearly reached 700,000 on September 6, 2023, bitcoin miners have been steadily removing them from the mempool. As of this now, there are only little more than 153,000 transactions still awaiting confirmation.
With fewer inscriptions, the transaction backlog for bitcoin miners decreases.
Just over 500,000 unconfirmed bitcoin transfers were still pending miner confirmation on September 15, 2023, down from nearly 700,000 the previous week. But as September came to a close, there were just little more than 153,000 unconfirmed transactions.
Both Johoe's mempool statistics and data from mempool.space show that a sizable number of the unconfirmed transfers have been handled. The miners' ability to wade through the vast ocean of unconfirmed transactions in the queue has been improved by a few things.
First, block times have decreased slightly from their 10-minute average, currently coming in at about 8 minutes and 48 seconds. Second, beginning September 25, the number of Ordinal inscriptions has significantly decreased.
With a drop in inscriptions, the Bitcoin blockchain is processing significantly fewer transactions since hitting an all-time high earlier this month. On the exact day a mere 31,251 inscriptions were processed, miners confirmed 285,750 transactions. The following day, miners upped the ante a hair, confirming approximately 309,789 transfers.
According to statistics, there are currently 54 blocks or 103.98 megabytes (MB) of block space that are pending confirmation. The mempool hasn't totally emptied since April 22, 2023, but at the current pace, there's a chance it will sometime next month, assuming daily inscriptions continue to trend lower than typical.
Do you favor using miners to eliminate the transaction backlog? Post your ideas and viewpoints on this topic in the comments area below.