Mempool spikes, the nightmare for every bitcoin user. They prevent you from sending or receiving your beloved BTC, leading one to wonder “Why is my BTC transaction taking so long to complete?”
The Bitcoin mempool is the location where transactions get sorted for confirmation, however depending on a variety of factors that we will go over in this article, you may end up waiting for far too long.
Whenever the mempool is overloaded, we say that it has spiked i.e. there is a “mempool spike.” What this means in reality is that there are too many transactions to fit in the next Bitcoin block. Due to block size constraints, Bitcoin miners must have a way to prioritize transactions.
That is where fees come into play, and they are the culprit that’s preventing you from completing your very urgent transaction. Usually, you can get by with almost any fee. Your transaction will be mined and included in the next couple of blocks.
However, when Bitcoin experiences a lot of traffic, meaning too many people sending transactions at the same time, a sort of auction starts to take place. A fee market. Users try to outbid each other in order get their transaction into the next block.
PushTX.com the simple & fast solution to get your BTC transaction confirmed
In 2015, Bitcoin developers introduced a “Replace by Fee” feature that enables users to get their transactions unstuck. RBF requires a strong technical know-how and additionally, using this feature requires a fully functional Bitcoin node which is a 307 GB commitment that is rarely an option for the average user.
This is where Pushtx.com, a Poolin product, comes in to help users with stuck transactions in an easy, cheap, and FAST way. All you need is your transaction hash and cryptocurrency (Litecoin, Lightning payment, Dogecoin, Zcash, DASH) to boost the transaction.
Mempool spikes often come without any warning and they may happen when you really need to make an important Bitcoin transaction.
When there are hundreds of thousands of users making simultaneous transactions, it’s easy to end up at the back of the line, even with fast settings.
Pushtx.com regularly sees a significant boost in users during mempool spikes. We noticed this recently in November and decided to parse some data to see if there was a consistent correlation between mempool spikes and increased Pushtx users.
Here’s what we gathered:
As you can see on the graph, throughout 2020 PushTx.com has been a popular destination for users during mempool spikes. Stuck Bitcoin transactions can end up waiting for days before they are finally confirmed.
How to avoid getting your Bitcoin transaction stuck in the first place?
Bitcoin transaction priority is calculated on a sat/b (satoshi per byte) ratio. The easiest way to find out what is the best current ratio is Poolin’s mempool explorer where you can easily get the best possible price for your needs.
Poolin’s mempool explorer updates every minute, so you can also see how many people are making transactions before you commit. However, if your Bitcoin transaction ends up getting stuck every one in a while, Pushtx.com is here to help you.
