The mempool is the network's holding area for transactions that have been made but not put into a block yet. Every Bitcoin node on the network holds unconfirmed transactions in RAM and removes them once they are confirmed. From then on they're held only on disk.
The bitcoin mempool is a collection of all transactions waiting to receive a network confirmation. Every time a bitcoin transaction is broadcasted to the network, it takes an average of 10 minutes before it receives the first confirmation. However, depending on how many pending transactions there are in the mempool at any given time, that 10-minute windows can be larger. Over the past few months, there have been multiple mempool incidents causing significant transaction confirmation delays.
A Closer Look At The Bitcoin Mempool
The concept of the bitcoin mempool is not all that difficult to grasp. Every new bitcoin transaction that is validated by the network will automatically be added to the mempool, where it awaits confirmations from miners. Once a miner picks up the transaction in question for inclusion in the next block, it will automatically receive its first confirmation.
Each node has it’s own mempool and can set the preferred size. When a new block is broadcasted to the network, each node removes the transactions that are in the mempool that have been confirmed. Getting that transaction picked up by bitcoin miners can be quite challenging, though. Miners prioritize validated unconfirmed mempool transactions based on their individual mining fees. These mining fees are distributed to the miners as a “bonus” for their efforts in solving the next block on the bitcoin network. Users who include a higher transaction fee will have their bitcoin transfers picked up quicker compared to the ones who have a low transaction fee.
The bitcoin mempool is a large collection of network transactions waiting to be confirmed. However, similar to any “pool” containing a lot of data, there are only so many transactions that can be kept in pending until a backlog is created. In most cases, the bitcoin mempool contains a relatively small number of unconfirmed transactions, which is not an issue. Unfortunately, a backlog can occur out of nowhere.
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