Hey Jason. The mempool is a collection of bitcoin transactions waiting to be included in the next block. The Bitcoin network is not very busy right now. It's very uncongested. Most transactions are happening at the cheapest fee possible and happening in roughly 10 minutes without waiting. The mempool has cleared meaning there's no backlog of transactions waiting.
Discussion
Check this empty block out! 🤙
This happens all of the time. It's pretty common. Some mining pools will send an empty block template to the network because an empty block template is faster to send and then they'll populate it later. So sometimes when blocks are found back to back instantly that empty template is the one that's used.
Thanks. I have a question about UTXO- to consolidate my UTXOs, do I just send the entire contents of a wallet to the same wallet as a transaction, or does it have to be to a different wallet?
Yes, that's one way to do it. I've done it. You just generate a new address and send everything (or what you wish to consolidate) to that address.