Yes, but the ongoing spam shows clearly that all full nodes are handling the traffic just fine. We were told that they would crash and burn from overloaded memory. Not true.
Wait, wasn't that exactly Hearn's main argument in his "the sky is falling if we don't increase the blocksize" blog post? So why do you see the fact that it did not prove true so far as supporting your position of increasing the block size?
b/c the congestion really has only just begun. if it persists, yes, ppl will start to stop using Bitcoin. the exit starts slowly at first and then will morph into a stampede; especially if the price starts plunging. the mempool is a problem that does have to be fixed so that ordinary users can start getting their tx's through. they won't be as patient as some of us here.
Tip your miner a dollar 'to insure promptness.'
There is no congestion, only load. Congestion would be if tx with competitive fees were nevertheless delayed.
Wallets and exchanges are upgrading to adaptive fees, and Bitcoin will soon be all the stronger for the experience.
That's how antifragility works. These encounters with adversity in the form of spam and crapfloods are already increasing Bitcoin's resilience.
