S2025:E15
On 2022-08-12, the Monero network was stress-tested with ~50,000 transactions and under $1,000 in fees in 24 hours, triggering “dynamic block sizing” for the first time, and highlighting performance constraints. Under peak load, a few nodes crashed, and the average confirmation times rose from about 2 minutes to roughly 30 minutes (≈ 15 blocks).
Services like CakeWallet, by then running on “default low-priority fees”, also experienced a multihour slowdown, with some users reporting waiting times of 3 hours (x.com/cakewallet/status/1558094085642194945).
These results expose concrete performance constraints in fee estimation, mining rules and node stability, and point to targeted improvements for optimized transaction pool management and adaptive fee algorithms to bolster the resilience of Monero. The findings underscore the need for ongoing, high-intensity testing, to ensure Monero can more efficiently handle unexpected traffic spikes without sacrificing privacy or decentralization.
