It tells me there are only 30.000 transactions? In the last block? Because that number seems very small compared to the hype that surrounds Bitcoin if that is "All Transactions of all time"
The 30k number that the website gives in the beginning is talking about the number of transactions that have not yet made it into a block but are currently being replicated among nodes in the network. Each transaction includes a bounty to be paid to the miner that includes it in a block. Most of these 30k pending transactions have a low fee and are usually ignored by most miners, but may eventually make it into one when an altruistic miner manages to mine a block, or when a greedy miner has no better options. If they don't make it into a block relatively soon, nodes will stop replicating them.
Do I understand correctly, though? If I want to send a small amount of bitcoin, with a minimal fee, there is a possibility that that transaction won't go through, because no miner picks it up?
As ignaloidas explained in another comment though, this doesn't include the Lightning Network which is where most everyday transactions would occur.
This is something I've never fully understood. Is the Lightning Network essentially a separate ledger of transactions that are "floating", if you will, off chain until (eventually) they get verified at some later time in a "final" state? What is the timing mechanism for when they get verified?
If you want a more technical explanation: https://youtu.be/MpfvhiqFw7A
Would you have any resource that is worth checking out to learn more about blockchain? I don't care about market analysis, economy. I just want to understand the underlying technology to know what's happening there. Book would be fine too.
The Bitcoin wiki has a lot more information, although it can be hard to navigate: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page
For some more modernish innovations in Blockchain tech in general, I would also recommend the Ethereum white paper: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper. Ethereum re-imagines the Bitcoin protocol with a turing complete virtual machine that runs on the chain itself.
Right now, the fees are relatively low because miners are primarily living on the block rewards for validating transactions. As those block rewards decrease (halvenings), transaction fees will need to pick up the slack. Smaller miners may also leave the network as the competition picks up, which will lower the difficulty and increase the chances of validating the block the fastest (and thus getting paid the rewards/fees).
Halvenings means less inflation, so the theory/practice is that the price will also go up over time... thus the transaction fees will go up, but not substantially because the price is also going up. This will also incentivize outside transactions like lightning network.
This is probably the best in depth technical overview of how Bitcoin works.
https://p2sh.info/dashboard/db/lightning-network?orgId=1&fro...
And what places or sites accept LN? Or it works with any btc transaction?
The receiver needs to support it, I've used:
- https://joltfun.com/ - Buy games with LN at low prices - https://www.bitrefill.com/ - Buy gift cards for many shops. This lets you make purchases on shops that don't accept Bitcoin.
There's also moon, which I haven't used but lets you buy from Amazon with LN: