If you have recently used bitcoin, then chances are that you have noticed that transaction times have become significantly slower. In fact, during the last couple of days over 40,000 transactions simply idled on the blockchain, without getting the needed confirmation to go through.

The actual cause behind this delay is not yet known, but there is speculation surrounding it. While those involved with the blocksize debate believe that a higher number of transactions has taken place, and that not all could be included in their afferent blocks, others think that it has something to do with the fees included for each trades, while another group of people believe that this is a result of a systematic attack on the blockchain network.

In case you have used bitcoin during the last couple of months, then chances are that you have heard about the block size debate, a topic that we have covered briefly before, and which has managed to divide the bitcoin community into separate sides.

In today’s article, we’ll take a look about what the controversy really is, and get into a few technical aspects, while keeping things as easy to comprehend as possible.