CURRENT UNCONFIRMED TX'S IN BTC MEMPOOL
Mempool - The BTC mempool (unconfirmed transactions) has shrunk from ~180k to 51k over the last week. Early morning yesterday I actually saw it hit 48k. The average fee which is inversely proportional to mempool size has gone from around $55 per transaction down to single digits at $9.82 today.
LAST WEEK AVERAGE BTC TX FEE
TODAY'S AVERAGE BTC TX FEE
Segwit (SW) - SW transaction percentages have gone up to at its peak 20%, which greatly reduces fees for SW users directly by making transaction data size smaller. This has the added benefit of lowering fees even for non SW Bitcoin transactions, because it reduces overall congestion on the blockchain. SW transactions do see more reduction because their transaction size is smaller, while non SW transactions are larger because they are still using the old legacy address format which takes up wasted space on the blockchain. As more wallets adopt SW, the network should become less congested which will continue to bring down fees. This isn't enough to fix the fee situation permanently, and actually wasn't the main reason that SW was created, but is a welcome added benefit. The main reason for SW's creation was to fix transaction malleability. This was necessary for the next evolution in Bitcoin. The Lightning Network.
Lightning Network (LN) is a second layer protocol that allows for payment channels that you can send Bitcoin through almost instantly (no waiting for confirmations of 10 minute blocks), as well as very cheap... like pennies or Satoshis is what some predict. LN is now live on main net with over 300 nodes running, and I believe now in the thousands of payment channels open. You can use it to send money to a friend using LN, or you can go play with it by purchasing some swag from Blockstream like stickers or shirts. Warning Developers do not recommend large transactions until further testing has been done on LN.
One downside to LN is that you have to open payment channels in advance and basically stake the amount of BTC you plan to be using on the network later. This may become easier and less cumbersome or taxing as adoption increases and the network gets "smarter". The plan is that you won't even know you are using the LN because wallets will do all the calculations, like path of the transaction, or which nodes/hubs it will pass through for cheapest and fastest payment. Eventually the channel will need to be closed as well. Like SW, the LN helps LN users directly with drastically reduced fees, ideally close to 0, but it will also help non LN users indirectly by decreasing the congestion and fees on the main blockchain, since many transactions will be settled "off chain" on the LN. Another added benefit is that payments done on LN become much harder to track, increasing privacy which is a key component of this revolution.
LIGHTNING NETWORK NODE MAP
It took almost 3 years to make this happen, and it's finally go time. (Fun fact - This was a big part of the reason Roger Ver Left with rest BCash/BTrash. They wanted big blocks, while everyone else believed that the LN was the answer. I believe this is the best thing for BTC, and may make many alt's less desirable now. Cheap, instant, and private Bitcoin tx's. This is history in the making. and I for one am incredibly excited to be a part of this historic moment. If you'd like to be apart of it, here is a tutorial by Jack Mallers for starting your own LN Node!
Thanks Jack and the rest of the Zap contributors as well as everyone who's contributed to making the Lightning Network a reality!
As always, hold at least a small portion of your portfolio in BTC. I think this just as or more important than ever with the Lightning Network going active!
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Thanks for reading!
-CryptoRocky