Someone is out there flooding the mempool again. Easy to tell that's what's happening because it's on a weekend (almost always less demand on a weekend).
Not sustainable but good for the miners.
My guess is that it's a bunch of shitcoin scammers who are going to try the bitcoin is too slow and costly thing again.
How much would be the cost of an attack like that?
When bitcoin was forking there was for sure a mempool manipulation, but nowadays I fell that unlikely.
Imho the problem is that when crypto move fast bitcoin is not enough fast, we should implement a better lighting network or bitcoin will never work for coffee or anything besides being a store of value.
I don't know the cost, but in the past it has been punitive. I remember the attack during the fork was said to have cost a significant sum.
The behaviour of the mempool seems unnatural for a weekend, therefore most likely an attack. Sure some exchanges occasionally adjust things on weekends due to the lower demand for blockspace but I don't think this is what's happening as they usually don't try to drive the fee higher.