I visited ViaBTC accelerator at 00:00 (UTC) and there was no remaining hourly free transaction.
Tried to push a tx for three hourly resets and same thing happened lol. I also had my watch on my side so pretty sure I hit at 00:00 or 00:01. Interesting thing was, I wasn't even asked to do a captcha... really starting to think that they are temporarily freezing the free slot reset at some times. Good thing the fees aren't as bad as before.
EDIT: last try at another 00:00, same scenario, quota has ran out, no captcha was asked
In recent days even if I try to be the fastest in using ViaBTC I still can't. Has ViaBTC really stopped their temporary acceleration?
How to check blocks mined by ViaBTC?
I want to check if they are still taking 100 low fee transactions every hour.
The free tx acceleration is still ongoing, I believe. I had a successful attempt couple days as well but there are some stuff going on that makes it harder to submit a tx e.g. we believe that bots were abusing the free slots hence they get taken fast.
For your 2nd question, most block explorers should do e.g.
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/blocks?q=guessed_miner(ViaBTC) or
https://mempool.space/mining/pool/viabtcViabtc has also reduced the free slots to 20 -- this will tighen the competition even more, rip.
By the order of submission, ViaBTC supports 20 FREE acceleration chances per hour.