The cost of transacting on the Bitcoin network has fallen sharply last week, as bitcoin-related activity started to slow down after BTC’s price managed to remain above the $11,000 mark.
According to data from Blockchain.com, first spotted by CoinDesk, the average transaction fee paid to transact on the Bitcoin network fell by 58% since last week, form a two-month high of $6.47 to $2.72. The drop came as activity on the blockchain started to slow down.
The number of unconfirmed transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain hit a 2.5-month high of 56,648 on July 28, as the memory pool (mempool), the total amount of data worth of valid transactions waiting to be confirmed, surpassed 53 MB.
The mempool’s rise was created as the network’s miners find one block, on average, every 10 minutes. Each block contains little over 1 MB of information, limiting the number of transactions included in them. Miners process transactions with higher fees first as they’re rewarded with the fees contained in the blocks they find.
This means that when the network becomes congested, waiting times go up for those that aren’t included in the next block. To be included, users pay higher fees. This week, however, the mempool has dropped to 3,656 unconfirmed transactions and a total size below 10 MB.
The mempool expanded late last month after the price of bitcoin rose from $9,00 to surpass the five-figure mark, confirming a bullish breakout. As BTC went past $10,000, the number of pending transactions surged over 1,900%, while the mean fee volume increased by more than 650%, CoinDesk reports.
Fees have now been dropping after bitcoin failed to break the resistance at the $12,000 mark and has been steadily trading above $11,500.
Featured image via Unsplash.
