the network is unhealthy and very few cross-connections are happening because NOBODY IS OPENING THEIR FIREWALL (or port-forwarding)
you all expect to connect TO other SFC wallets but not willing to allow people to initiate a connection back to you.
this is why pools like hash-to-coins and mining-dutch are dead, they cannot connect to anyone.

i opened up my own to allow incoming connections and i have a bunch, so the nodes do exist, they are just being leaches.

without network connectivity there will be extremely slow confirmations, if at all.