Blockchain congestion forces us to a new release

Unfortunately we see the next wave of blockchain congestion. > 140k unconfirmed transactions.

In the current version we use fixed mining fee and this is even for normal transaction atm too low.
If the transaction has more inputs as usual the fee/size gets even lower.
We have already implemented dynamic fees with a fee estimation service thought that is part of the next release with tons of other changes and is still not ready and needs a lot of testing, so that will require more time.

To get an intermediate solution I decided to make another “softfork” release with changing the trade tx fee to 0.0015 BTC. With that fee we are with current fee prices above average (200-450 Sat/byte) but I fear in 1 month that might be already average fee price if the congestion increase continues like in the last months.

As with the last release when we changed the fees it is a trade protocol change and a kind of “softfork”. So the current offers are still valid but users who have updated cannot take those offers as the fee would not match (both traders need to use the same fee).
So it is recommended to remove the offers and set up new offers with the new release.

I am very sorry about that but I think we are not the only one who suffer from those problems.

For all those who have trades with not confirming transactions:
You don’t need to open a dispute, you also can wait until it gets confirmed and then continue the trade. If you open a dispute we still need to wait and after it is confirmed both trader can choose to continue the trade or cancel.

Bitcoin had to fork when Gavin said it 2 years ago :slight_smile:

I have not heard any reasonable explanation why the nr. of transactions explodes in 1 day by factor 10.
Is there any service or dark market where they get 10 times more users over night? And then after a few days it goes back in the same rate? And that patters repeats in a nearly predictable manner, but steadily increasing the pressure.
https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#all

I assume that is a result of an agenda. Txs created with the only purpose to create congestion thus hurting usage of Bitcoin, keeps BTC price low, increase miner fee and increases pressure of block size increase which leads to less decentralization.
Who might be interested in such?
Governments?
Big banks?
Hard to believe that they are not good friends to Bitcoin ;-).

Maybe a conspiracy theory, but at least a very reasonable strategy for those who are opposed to Bitcoin.

They are just coming back after all altcoin pumps.
The limit of the block size just make it worse every time, now the mempool can’t even empty itself during the weekends.
The bitcoin network was never thought on working with full blocks.

@HostFat

I disagree. Data clearly shows the use of tx spam to congest the network to make a point.

It has been explained too many times, that bigger blocks inevitably lead to centralization, while the opposite is why we’re all here.

Miner centralization is too bad already. One malicious actor (Jihan) is in a position to stifle innovation and prevent proper scaling for monetary gains.

BU is developed by a handful of developers with an unimpressive track record, which leads to a concerning centralization of development. I guess I don’t have to lay out the advantages of a bigger number of independent devs.

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Well said.