Bitcoin Mempool: What Happens to Unconfirmed Transactions?

Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency network that enables users to send and receive electronic payments anywhere in the world. There are no physical bitcoins, nor are there accounts in which bitcoins are held. Instead, Bitcoin acts as a form of electronic cash, and users can make peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions using the Bitcoin blockchain, which acts as a kind of electronic ledger. The blockchain is constantly updated by nodes, which share updated balances and data across the network. However, before transactions can be added to the blockchain, they must go to the mempool.

How Does a Bitcoin Transaction Work?

Before we reach the mempool, let’s understand how a Bitcoin transaction works. All bitcoin transactions are simply pending transactions and only exist in the mempool before it’s confirmed. Whenever a user initiates a bitcoin transaction, it’s signed cryptographically and sent to the Bitcoin network waiting for a miner to verify the transaction and add it to the blockchain. Every verified transaction is publicly available and accessible on the public ledger as a means to transparently record and distribute to the ledger of each Bitcoin transaction without being able to be manipulated.