Bitcoin Transaction Fees Soar to $40, Sparking Debate and Push for L2 Solutions Amid Mempool Backlog

Bitcoin’s transaction fees reached a staggering $40 per transaction on December 16, 2023, surpassing the previous record of $31 set in May of that year. Miners have been benefiting from the surge in fees, with one block earning more in fees than the block subsidy itself. The hash price per petahash per second (PH/s) currently stands at $108 per PH/s per day. High-priority transactions are being quoted at 674 satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB), while lower-priority transactions cost around 602 sat/vB or approximately $35.78. Some transactions even exceeded $50 per transfer. As a result, there are currently eight unmined blocks packed with high-priority transactions and a backlog of 383,607 unconfirmed BTC transactions in the mempool. These pending blocks, totaling over 531 megabytes of block space, are estimated to take just over two days and three hours to clear. The skyrocketing transaction fees have sparked discussions about alternative blockchains and the potential for layer two (L2) solutions to alleviate the congestion. While some criticize the high fees as “ridiculous and unusable,” others see it as a sign of increased security for Bitcoin. Advocates for L2 solutions believe that the current fee environment will further drive the adoption and development of these scaling solutions.