Soo....? Your not interested in what the intent of it was?
Do you think it was a Chinese Pool/Miner or Chinese Government or other?
I'm sure many are speculating, and the source transaction ( and by proxy the IP ) have been bouncing around for a while, I have just begun to hear a lot of dicy things as people begin to get spooked. Words like "Gov't" and "Centralize" and "Someone should do something".
This has been a very low cost attack, the attacker has likely only had to shell out $20,000 to sustain it, possibly less. If it was the Chinese Gov't it wouldn't be 50,000 transactions in the mempool it would be 50,000,000. The could dump 20 million into the network without batting an eye.
If anything, it is likely a bank wanting to know if they can transfer their remittance into bitcoin. They noticed the network didn't have volume so they simply bought $20,000 worth of volume. That's like a dinner party to these corps. Petty cash.
All we've had to do is dump an extra dime or two into transaction fees. Network is still fine, Transaction time (for those who pay the toll) are still fine. Only micropayments are broken now.
This could go on forever and I wouldn't care... just so long as no one acts rashly to "do something" on a problem that isn't broke.
EDIT: Got zero happy there. FTFY