I have to agree that it seems a lot of self-referential transactions using "dust" were pushed into the mempool to create an artificial crisis.

Some of the activity points to two participants, Roger Ver and Jihan Wu as primary culprits. They are well-funded and certainly have the motive and means to carry out such a campaign.

It is rather suspicious that so close to the August 1st deadline that the mempool is nearly empty and the fee market has adjusted to a much lower level. Its almost as if someone has false confidence that their plan is a "dead lock" to be the winner.

I think they will be bitterly disappointed.