Guide to mempool.space

00:00 Hey everyone, this is a quick guide to 00:03 mempool.space 00:05 This is a techie video, so this is not 00:07 something the average person needs to 00:09 deal with, but I figured I would just 00:11 give you a quick run through on what 00:13 this is because not everybody knows what 00:15 a meool is. And this is an advanced 00:17 video and I will go back and tag it as 00:19 such. Okay, so when you go to 00:21 mempool.space space up here in the uh 00:25 browser. Uh what you see is the current 00:28 happenings on the Bitcoin network. So 00:31 I'm going to walk you through what this 00:32 is. The most recent block is block 00:35 874,786. 00:38 That is the most recent block of 00:39 transactions that has been solved by the 00:42 Bitcoin miners and cemented permanently 00:45 and forever onto the Bitcoin blockchain. 00:48 This thing up here at the top is the 00:50 Bitcoin blockchain. this dividing line 00:52 that shows the up and down arrows here 00:54 and the left and right arrows here. That 00:56 dividing line is between blocks that 00:58 have been mined on the right side and 01:01 blocks that have not yet been mined on 01:03 the left side. So you'll see uh let's go 01:06 through it item by item. On the right 01:08 side, the average price per transaction 01:11 was six sats per vite. Uh the range was 01:15 between six and 339 sats per vite. 01:18 That's how expensive transactions were. 01:20 I'm not going to explain exactly how 01:22 that's calculated because it gets too 01:23 technical for this video, but the mining 01:26 transactions uh in that were worth 07 01:30 bitcoin. You'll see in previous uh 01:32 blocks it was 066 088. And this one back 01:36 here was a a more uh I guess lucrative 01:40 block to mine.242. 01:42 Over time, those uh that amount of 01:45 Bitcoin keeps going up, which makes the 01:47 uh Bitcoin transactions worth mining. Uh 01:51 in addition to the block reward, whoever 01:52 mines that block gets uh 3.125 Bitcoin. 01:56 These blocks were mined 18 minutes ago. 01:58 The one before that was 5 minutes before 01:60 it. The one before that was one minute 02:01 before it. The one before that was 11 02:03 minutes. And the one back before that 02:05 was 20 minutes. Overall, it's about 10 02:07 minutes, but it uh it does uh change 02:10 over time. Okay. So if you want to and 02:13 then let's go over here. Okay, so coming 02:15 up uh eight sats per vite is what it 02:18 takes to get in the upcoming block. The 02:20 total bids are between seven and 302 02:22 sats per vite. Whoever mines this 02:25 upcoming block is going to get 103 02:28 bitcoin in addition to the block reward 02:31 of 3.125 bitcoin. Uh and then it always 02:34 is going to say estimated 9 minutes 1928 02:38 38. That's always estimates. uh and you 02:40 can you can see the number of 02:41 transactions. So most of these uh past 02:44 transactions have between 4,500 02:46 transactions and 5,600 transactions. 02:49 These do not count all There you go. 02:51 Hey, the block just got solved. So 02:54 Foundry USA just solved a block with 02:57 four uh 4,640 02:60 transactions in it. They got 0102 03:02 Bitcoin and they was done just now. 03:06 Okay. And that means all of the 03:08 transactions that were in this first 03:10 block are now permanently uh permanently 03:14 uh cemented into the Bitcoin blockchain. 03:16 And you'll see it actually took 20 03:18 minutes between these two blocks uh or 03:20 19 or so. And now all of the Bitcoin 03:23 miners are working on mining this block. 03:26 All right. So, as we go down, what does 03:27 it take to get in the next Bitcoin 03:29 block? If you don't care, you know, if 03:31 it takes an hour or two or three, you 03:33 can uh bid um as low as 57 cents. You 03:37 can get a transaction in at uh for 57 03:40 cents. If you want it to get in in the 03:43 next 20 or 30 minutes, um you need to 03:46 pay 85 cents to transact on the Bitcoin 03:48 network. Again, this does not count 03:50 transactions within Coinbase, which are 03:52 free. It does not count transactions on 03:55 the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which are 03:57 a fraction of a penny. Um, it this is 03:59 just transaction on the base layer of 04:03 the Bitcoin blockchain. The the most 04:05 expensive, the hardest. This is the kind 04:07 of this is where you transact. If you're 04:09 transacting, you know, millions of 04:12 dollars, billions of dollars, you know, 04:14 all of that would take place on this 04:15 blockchain. And right now, anywhere in 04:17 the world, you can spend 99 cents and be 04:21 guaranteed that you will go in the next 04:22 block. So literally you can send a 04:26 billion dollars anywhere in the world 04:28 right now on the Bitcoin blockchain with 04:30 absolute certainty that it will be 04:33 delivered that the transaction will be 04:35 irreversible and that you know all of 04:38 that is possible for less than a dollar 04:40 for an unlimited amount of money. All 04:42 right. And I've I've talked in previous 04:44 videos over here on the right on the 04:46 Bitcoin uh block difficulty. Right now, 04:48 this uh the last two weeks has been 04:50 averaging at about 9 and a half minutes. 04:54 And what that means is uh the Bitcoin 04:56 miners are mining a little bit too 04:58 quickly, which means the network is 04:60 about to adjust the mining difficulty up 05:02 by 5.28%. 05:04 Uh that's going to happen in the next 24 05:07 hours at roughly December 15 at 4:53 05:10 p.m. In 24 hours from now, the network 05:13 it will become 5.28% 28% more difficult 05:16 to find a m bitcoin block. That is 5% 05:19 more, which will result in all of these 05:21 miners that are finding blocks at 9.5 05:23 minutes going back to 10 minutes. The 05:26 network is constantly adjusting every 05:27 two weeks up and down uh to make sure 05:30 that it's always about that period of 05:32 time. Uh on the right side here, it says 05:35 if you submit a really cheap 05:36 transaction, it's going to purge it and 05:38 it's not even going to pay attention. Uh 05:41 this memory usage is complicated. I 05:43 won't go through that. There's a bunch 05:45 of junk transactions that are really 05:46 small that nobody cares about. And then 05:48 it just shows the incoming transactions. 05:50 I'll come back to this uh thing up here 05:52 on the left. And then re it shows recent 05:54 transactions and uh recent replacements 05:58 which is again too technical for this 05:59 video. All right. So this is a Bitcoin 06:02 block that is in the process of trying 06:04 to be mined. This shows all the 06:06 transactions. This shows consolidation 06:08 transactions where a group of Bitcoin 06:10 transactions are being consolidated into 06:12 a single transaction uh which is done to 06:15 save future transaction fees or to 06:18 simplify the storage of Bitcoin. Coin 06:20 joins which usually there's very few are 06:23 when people are combining Bitcoin to 06:25 enhance their privacy, not something an 06:27 average person needs to do. And there's 06:28 also data transactions where people are 06:30 using the Bitcoin blockchain to uh 06:33 submit anything. It could be a message 06:36 to a loved one. It could be um an image. 06:39 It could be uh a piece of data like uh 06:42 election records. They did this in 06:44 Guatemala where uh they were constantly 06:46 cementing the election results in the 06:49 Bitcoin blockchain as the election 06:51 results were rolling in to guarantee 06:52 that nobody could change them. So people 06:54 are using the Bitcoin blockchain for a 06:56 lot of things in addition to 06:58 transmitting Bitcoin uh value because it 07:01 is the most it's what's called an 07:03 immutable ledger. An immutable ledger is 07:05 a ledger that can never be changed. And 07:08 the Bitcoin blockchain is the most 07:09 immutable thing humans have ever 07:12 invented. Let's say the least immutable 07:14 would maybe be a white uh you know a dry 07:16 erase board or a white board or a 07:18 blackboard or whatever where you can 07:20 literally walk up, wipe your hand across 07:21 it, and it goes away. Uh that is the 07:24 most easily changeable. Or maybe you 07:25 draw your name in the sand and somebody 07:27 kicks sand across it and it's gone. The 07:30 most immutable thing humans have ever 07:32 invented in the entire world is the 07:35 Bitcoin blockchain. So, a lot of people 07:37 use the Bitcoin blockchain to anchor 07:39 things for which they need an absolute, 07:41 complete, and immutable record, meaning 07:43 a record that absolutely cannot change, 07:46 such as election outcomes in a country 07:48 like Guatemala again. And they used the 07:51 Bitcoin blockchain uh to uh as the 07:54 election results were rolling in, they 07:56 wrote them to the Bitcoin blockchain to 07:58 guarantee that there would not be any 07:59 shenanigans and that nobody could change 08:01 the record of the votes. Um, so that's 08:04 what these transactions are. again. But 08:06 if we go back and look at coin joins and 08:08 consolidations, here's all of them. So 08:10 if we take a random, let me try to look 08:13 at just a random transaction. Let's say 08:16 we look at here, I'll pick one over 08:18 here. Um, so here's a random transaction 08:22 six minutes ago. I just picked it out of 08:23 the blue. Uh, this says six minutes ago 08:27 someone is trying to they paid $2.37. 08:32 They are trying to transmit. Let me see 08:34 if I can tell. uh 0.00 00 uh three 08:38 bitcoin and let me see. Normally it'll 08:40 show you the US dollar value of that so 08:42 you don't have to figure it out yourself 08:44 but I'm not immediately seeing that. Let 08:46 me see if I normally you can turn it on 08:48 and off. Um 08:51 fee rate. 08:53 Okay. I'm not immediately seeing it but 08:56 or maybe you have to click here. Um, 09:03 let's see if it'll tell us how much 09:04 they're transacting here. Okay, here we 09:06 go. Uh, $312. So, somebody used the 09:08 Bitcoin blockchain to move $312. 09:12 And, uh, we can go in and look at, you 09:14 know, why they did it, how they did it, 09:16 all that sort of stuff. Um, we don't 09:18 know why they did it, but we can look 09:19 at, you know, the mechanics of that. Um, 09:21 so anyway, um, we'll look at, uh, let me 09:24 see if there's a bigger one. Um, 09:28 okay. Let's see if 09:32 down here. 09:37 Let's let's look at the hottest 09:39 transaction here. Someone was willing to 09:40 pay 30 bucks. Um, they paid 30 bucks to 09:45 move. 09:46 Again, sometimes people just do this for 09:48 no reason. Oh, to Bitcoin. Okay. So, 09:50 they uh for security reasons, maybe it's 09:53 a multi- signature wallet or something 09:55 like that, but they wanted to pay $30. 09:58 They were willing to pay extra in order 09:60 to move Bitcoin that was worth uh two 10:03 Bitcoin total. So, $200,000. So, whoever 10:06 did this um is moving $30,000 one place 10:11 and $182,000 10:13 another place, $213,000. 10:15 and they decided to pay the most 10:17 expensive fee for this entire 10:19 transaction. The most expensive fee in 10:21 the entire block of this entire 10:23 transaction, which is this bright red 10:25 one up in the corner. And let's see what 10:27 somebody's doing down here in the bottom 10:29 left. All right. So, we'll look at this 10:32 transaction down here. Somebody paid a 10:34 buck 29 to move. 10:38 What did they move? They paid a buck 29 10:40 to move. 10:43 Okay. uh $354. 10:46 So, you know, people are using the 10:48 Bitcoin blockchain for everything. So, 10:50 that's a quick rundown. Uh the coolest 10:52 little animation, which we'll see when a 10:54 block gets mined, is when somebody uh uh 10:57 mines a block, you see all of these 10:59 transactions here get uh swooshed away. 11:03 And you s you could see the top of that 11:05 earlier when the Bitcoin uh block got 11:07 mined real time. You can see it just in 11:09 the bottom left uh how it just sort of 11:11 blows away and then it starts working on 11:14 the next block. You can also see here uh 11:16 every few seconds it updates to reflect 11:18 new transactions that have entered uh 11:20 the Bitcoin um uh blockchain and or the 11:25 meool waiting to be written to the 11:26 Bitcoin blockchain. So for example, 11:28 there's a bright red one. Let's see what 11:30 they're doing with this one right here. 11:32 All right, somebody's paying 23 bucks. 11:34 Super expensive. And they are doing that 11:36 to move 11:39 H something's not right. It's not 11:40 showing me the actual 11:43 It's not showing me the actual total for 11:44 some reason. Uh of how much they 11:46 actually are spending to move. But 11:48 anyway, um so this is, you know, 11:51 technical video and again if we watched 11:53 long enough, we would see the very cool 11:54 animation where it just uh blows away 11:57 the old transaction as they get 11:59 permanently cemented to the blockchain 12:01 and it shows us new transactions from 12:03 there. So that is the mempool. It's 12:05 super technical. You don't need to mess 12:06 with it. But you know, this is basically 12:09 the vitals of the Bitcoin blockchain. 12:11 Again, it does not show you all the 12:13 transactions happening on Coinbase or 12:15 places like that. It does not show you 12:17 all the people buying coffee with a 12:19 Bitcoin lightning transaction. It just 12:21 shows you the uh the most immutable 12:24 transactions, the transactions that 12:26 people want permanently and forever uh 12:28 absolutely cemented in stone and that 12:31 absolutely positively will never be 12:33 reversed. Those are the transactions 12:35 that are written here.