When did the hardfork occur? Things have been so slow in terms of transfers it's ridiculous.
Eh?
All this crap about slow bitcoin transfers is complete FUD. I made several large and small transfers this past week between multiple local wallets and web wallets, and they all were fully confirmed within 10 mins or less.
Agreed. I get the sense that it's being blown out of proportion by people looking to spread FUD about Bitcoin, the core devs, and what they are working on. Sure, there should be more room in blocks for free/low cost transactions, but it's not exactly an issue at the moment. Just because someone is paying a shit ton of XBT to spam the network (and not really getting anywhere with it..) doesn't mean we need to force a rushed hard fork!
Actually they are not paying a shit ton ... the spam is being sent with minimal fees, and as it is not being processed (because it can't because of block size) it is wiped from Mempool after 24hrs ... rinse, repeat ...
Only by processing the transactions will it cost the spammers anything.
This is my understanding of the situation anyway, from following Cypher's thread.
Without a doubt tho, IMO, it has something to do with the block size debate and is not an actual attack on BTC itself.
Somebody is trying to prove a point. At the moment they are proving that BTC can function fine with more tx's flowing thru the network, so bandwidth is not an argument
If you want a transaction processed, all you have to do is add at least the normal fee of .0001 and it should go thru fine.
https://tradeblock.com/blockchainFrom here you can see that there are 90k spam tx in Mempool backlog, and total fees of 4.5 BTC, giving an average fee of 0.00005. Given that genuine tx's will be being sent with minimum .0001, and many with more than that, the fees on the spam are tiny, hence the backlog should only affect anyone who wants a fee-free tx. Boo-hoo ...
Personally I think it's actually showing how robust the system is.
EDIT 2: I am not sure which the spammer is fighting for as he is proving that the nodes are not collapsing with the extra tx in the Mempool, the block size being the limiting factor in clearing it. Meanwhile a Fee-market is developing, whereby anyone paying a bit more is still guaranteed a fast transaction. If anything, its just proving how versatile and adaptable BTC is.
EDIT : Oops ... wrong link ... I will leave this one here tho as its a funny story !!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/weirdnewsvideo/11728260/Naked-man-steals-police-car.html