https://mempool.space/address/bc1quhruqrghgcca950rvhtrg7cpd7u8k6svpzgzmrjy8xyukacl5lkq0r8l2d
Bitfinex comes and tries to consolidate its dust with 20 blocks worth of tx paying even 50-60sat/b, because obviously, their script is detecting their won transactions in the mempool so they were trying to compete with their own so from 2sat/b in just a few hours we're at 40. When you think that there are still a ton of other exchanges waiting for this then probably it will take more than three weekends for everything to normalize.
The number of transactions in the mempool has no effect on the hash rate and the block time pace is almost normal:
Current Pace: 100.6911% (448 / 444.93 expected, 3.07 ahead)
Makes you wonder if it was supposed to be be 5 - 6 sats /vb and someone munged it.
The mempool was at spot that those TX would have slowly cleared over a bit of time.
I know I have said it before but never think it's people doing something wrong deliberately when incompetence is just as likely.
As we see from the hacks and other issues just about all the exchanges out there have crap programming.
This could just be another case of that.
-Dave