The number of Bitcoin transactions waiting to be confirmed by the network in the Bitcoin mempool has reached a record high since the Terra crash.
The mempool, a data structure that stores valid transactions that have not yet been added to the blockchain, briefly had about 81,000 transactions in the afternoon of March 9. This shows that the interest in the number one blockchain is increasing.
That figure was just 1,000 coins less than the May 13, 2022 peak when the algorithmic stablecoin UST fell to zero, but 66 percent more than the 48,000 unconfirmed coins in mid-November following the collapse of FTX.
The number of transactions pending approval on the Bitcoin network had reached record levels, exceeding 256 thousand in December 2017, when BTC first went up to $20,000.
Why did the bitcoin mempool rise last week?
Ho Chan Chung, head of marketing at analytics platform CryptoQuant, told Blockworks. Chung noted a jump in trading volumes in both the spot and perpetual markets for both BTC and ETH as USDC dropped below $0.90 on March 11.
According to the news, the mempool may reflect these transactions that are tried to be closed on the chain. However, unconfirmed transactions peaked about 30 hours before USDC lost its 1:1 balance against the US Dollar. This event spread to a number of other stablecoins, including DAI.
The number of unconfirmed transactions also dwindled sharply before USDC briefly plunged to an all-time low.
On the other hand, the Bitcoin developer alias 0xB10C said, “Generally speaking, I don’t think it’s related to the depeg that happened after 30 hours. It looks like someone posted a large number of transaction blocks at that time with a low fee rate of 2 sat/vB.” made his comment.
