Hello everyone - I received some information from the dev team regarding the slow blockchain, and am sharing it below:

It is taking a long time for the next block to be generated. We're still not seeing enough people staking, which we need for network stability at this point. We also have a ton of people on the old wallet, as the devs can see them trying to connect to the nodes. Unfortunately, everyone needs to be on the new wallet since the nodes block those that aren't. If you can help us spread the word and get people to update their wallets, then leave them open and unlocked it would really help move things along.

I hope this helps.