More than 200,000 transactions are waiting to be confirmed, and the Bitcoin network is almost collapsed

Last night, Bitcoin network congestion hit a new high again, with more than 20万笔transactions waiting to be written to the blockchain this morning so that value can be transferred through the network.

The Bitcoin blockchain produces a block every ten minutes, but its capacity is limited, and its transaction processing capacity is not even comparable to the operating capacity of floppy disks 30 years ago. With the recent continuous increase in the price of Bitcoin, its demand has also increased significantly.

However, since the supply is fixed and cannot meet the demand, network congestion has become a common phenomenon, just like the morning rush hour at 9 o'clock every day. Fortunately, Bitcoiners can "jump the queue" by paying a high fee, that is, when others take the bus or subway, you choose to take a taxi. Unfortunately, however, the current fee has become more and more expensive.

According to Bitcoin company 21.co, the current transaction fee for a 250-byte Bitcoin transaction is $1.82. However, 250-byte transactions are rare, and usually transactions are around 400 bytes, which costs between $3 and $4.

This data is constantly changing, and some even say that a $10 fee was paid. The unfortunate user or company below paid a $33 fee when sending $43 worth of Bitcoin, and only $10 was received in the end.

The transaction was for a large amount of data, about 4 kilobytes, but even in 1986, at the dawn of the new digital age, the first 1.3 MB floppy disks didn’t cost $33 to transfer 4 kilobytes.

Controversy continues

As you can imagine, the Bitcoin network space is being consumed by record-breaking transaction volumes, and transaction congestion has even caused network outages. Users have responded to this phenomenon in a fixed way, some calling for Segregated Witness (Segwit), some shouting for UASF (User Activated Soft Fork), some supporting BU, and some directly saying "It's time to take some action."

In this case, Coinbase chose to issue an advisory warning its users that Bitcoin transactions would be subject to delays that could last longer than expected due to increased trading activity.

BitPay CEO Stephen Pair said he could support a "hard fork to a 2mb soft limit or an 8mb hard limit." This is interesting because it continues Bitcoin's previous 250kb soft limit, which miners eventually increased from 500kb to 750kb, with a hard limit of 1mb. However, no formal review application has been submitted for this proposal.

That is, everyone has an opinion on the problem, which means it is still unsolved. In addition, 30% of miners seem to be happy with the situation because they have not chosen any solution. Maybe they enjoy receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in transaction fees every day.

On the other hand, developers have always insisted on their own methods. If companies can unite, they can definitely solve this problem. However, at present, companies are either warning users to stay away from Bitcoin and use other cryptocurrencies for hedging, or making a series of well-intentioned suggestions that are not proven at all, or they will directly express their support for Segregated Witness or BU.

Ultimately, the end result of this chaos is that no one is supporting any of the solutions because none of them are being implemented. With massive congestion, high fees, and endless debate, you have to wonder why this magical internet currency takes hours or days to transfer.

Welcome to the world of Bitcoin, where you can experience peak nightmare in digital form.