Mempool Explorer

A mempool explorer is a software application, often in the form of a website, which displays useful information about the current state of the mempool. The mempool is the collection of unconfirmed transactions, transactions which have not yet been included in a block.

Mempool explorers commonly publish stats including average and median fee rates, estimated fee rates required to achieve specific confirmation times, and total data size and bitcoin volume of the mempool. All of these statistics can be useful to Bitcoin users who intend to submit new transactions to the network by informing them on how much to pay in fees, and how soon to expect their transaction to be confirmed in a block.

Several popular mempool explorers exist, each optimized for different uses. Mempool.Space is helpful in setting fees for Bitcoin transactions in order to optimize for fee savings or rapid confirmation. Jochen Hoenicke’s Mempool Explorer is more helpful for analyzing past data on Bitcoin fee rates and visualizing mempool traffic and trends. Lastly, Blockstream includes data about unconfirmed transactions, including confirmation time estimates and highlights if a given transaction overpaid in fees.