Thank you very much for the feedback. You have a different level of knowledge; I am still learning. The information in your comment is very valuable.
I just want to reflect on a thought experiment. What if we imagine that RC doesn't exist—what, then, would prevent a malicious actor from using software to create millions, billions, or even trillions of transactions (what could possibly limit that number)? In this case, the transaction queue would keep growing, and the waiting time for regular user transactions would also increase. If we imagine this playing out, with transaction processing times reaching, say, one week or even one month, wouldn't that essentially mean collapse?
Transactions have a default expiration timeout of 60 seconds, they won't stay in the queue forever.
Before RC was implemented, this was the only protection mechanism. Now we have an additional one :)
Oh, I didn’t know about the 60-second waiting time, but you wrote:
Can the transaction confirmation timeout be changed, or is the rule fixed at 60 seconds?
AFAIR, 60s is the maximum value and it can be shortened. But take this answer with a grain of salt. I would have to check the code to be sure.
The next hardfork will allow a longer timeout to make multisig transactions easier.