Every Bitcoin transaction that needs to be confirmed goes into the mempool wich has a maximul pre-set value of 300k transactions. In the last weeks the aggregate size of transactions waiting to be confirmed got dangerously high wich results into a long time for a transaction to be approved. The rate at wich nodes validate transactions needs to be higher than the arriving transactions rate, so that no blockage of transactions occurs. This blockage translate into a bad user experience, high fees and looong waiting time.
Lately the number of Bitcoin daily transactions grew at a steady 300k transactions which seems to stretch the limits of the system so that a number of Bitcoin businesses owners, including Barry Silbert (Digital Currency Group), Roger Ver (Bitcoin.com) and major mining players Jihan Wu (Bitmain) and Valery Vavilov (BitFury), have come to a general agreement at the currently ongoing Consensus conference in New York.
The group, that represents 58 companies located in 22 countries, 83.28% of hashing power, 5.1 billion USD monthly on chain transaction volume and 20.5 million bitcoin wallets; agreed to collectively enable the SegWit proposal for Bitcoin scaling immediately additionally to other proposed solution like a hard fork or increasing the size limit blocks.
Sarah Maxwell, Blockchain.com:
"The consensus realized today reflects our collective desire to see the industry move forward. We are grateful to join these partners and are committed to helping Bitcoin reach its full potential to improve the lives of billions across the globe."
References:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-mempool-hits-all-time-high-highlighting-urgent-need-for-scaling
https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions
https://medium.com/@DCGco/bitcoin-scaling-agreement-at-consensus-2017-133521fe9a77
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-scaling-consensus-reached-commentary-from-industry-leaders
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2017-March/013921.html