Quote from: oblongmeteor on November 19, 2013, 11:50:28 PM

There seems to be a substantial backlog (6000) of Bitcoin transactions building up thanks to the increasing number of users taking to the technology (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=338999.0) and numerous questions in the [Technical Support] board (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=4.0) over why transactions are seemingly now stuck in Limbo even when they include a fee.

Suggestions have been mooted such as "include a higher fee" and "be more generous", but how does this work in the context of most users? The average person will do what their wallet tells them. They'll have no idea what constitutes a suitable fee for inclusion in a block and when they realize that even if they include the required 0.0001 BTC minimum fee, this puts them in the same position and requires they still wait 12-48 hours for their transaction to confirm - it's going to raise serious questions over Bitcoin's scalability...

In addition, according to CoinMill - the cost of 1 BTC is currently 641.84 USD and a transaction fee of 0.0001 BTC is 0.06 USD (6 cents). 0.0005 (the old fee) is 30 cents. As Bitcoin appreciates (if it does), the cost of transactions relative to the value of a Bitcoin grows substantially.

This makes it pretty uneconomical for any merchant to engage in using Bitcoin as a currency as A) they'll be waiting ages for their transaction to confirm if the user incorrectly attaches an 'unacceptable' fee and B) the cost of moving BTC is likely to rapidly meet or exceed that of preexisting payment methods such as ACH, Debit and eventually Credit cards... and in the case of the latter two it doesn't generally take 24-48 hours to even acknowledge your transaction exists.

Are there any solutions to this conundrum?

You are taking things out of context.

Please show me a single user that
a) is using standard transactions
b) paid the MINIMUM fee
c) didn't create a tx w/ unconfirmed inputs (which have to be confirmed before the tx can confirm)

and has a tx stuck for hours.

The fee is currently 0.1 mBTC (~$0.05). While this is not free it is pretty much cheaper than any other payment system.
Credit Cards: $0.30 + 2%
PayPal: $0.30 + 3%
ACH: $0.25 to $0.50
Bank Wire: $10 to $25
International Bank Wire: $25 to $40
Check processing (business): $0.50 ea
etc

Most users with tx "stuck" issues involve either
a) a free as in no fee at all
b) giant bloated dust spam tx that miners are reluctant to include in blocks
c) tx which have no fee issues like using unconfirmed outputs as inputs.