Bitcoin Forum

I have seen people using accelerators to help their unconfirmed transactions get through.

This seems like it could be a better option than segwit or lightning network.

What do people think about this?

 :)

No, a "transaction accelerator" is an illusion.

There is no such thing. It is basically a mini-mempool for that or a group of miners.
So, if I "accelerate", all I'm doing is asking a miner to include my tx in their next block,
instead of just waiting in the mempool.

It is counter to Bitcoin's incentive structure of fees and can not last long term.

You are better off using a wallet like Electrum on your computer or phone. Enable dynamic fees and replace by fee, and mark a transaction as replaceable when you send. Also set the fee slider to high. If for some reason the dynamic fee calculation is too low and it is taking longer than an hour for your send to get confirmed, just click on the transaction in your wallet and bump the fee up.

No. It's just a fee race.

Transaction accelerators are not comparable to SegWit or the lightning network.  All they do is get a group of miners to prioritise your transaction so that it can fit into the next block - this means that not everyone could use a transaction accelerator as if they did, all of the transactions on the network would be equally prioritised.  Each block can only accept the same number of transactions so if the system is clogged, it is clogged, and SegWit/LN are ways to make Bitcoin scalable so that more people can use it.  Transaction accelerators don't do this, they only help individuals.

If anything they're a bad thing because it means that people lose the incentive to raise the fee for their transaction, so then the fee becomes higher for everyone else.

Perhaps each mining pool should create their own "accelerator" and accept payment for "acceleration".  Those that pay the highest "acceleration fee" will get to be in the next block.  The lower "acceleration fees" will need to wait for later blocks.

Oh wait, isn't this how bitcoin already works?  We pay a transaction fee to get our transactions confirmed.  Those that pay the highest fee get confirmed first. Even better, with the current system we can KNOW that the miner that confirms our transaction will get the fee.  If we use third party "accelerators" we might have to pay a separate fee to multiple miners and only one of them will actually confirm the transaction. The rest will get free money!

Perhaps a better solution would be for most of the major wallets to default to RBF.  Then the wallet can have an "accelerate" button that increases the fee paid.

Perhaps the major wallets should also have an "accelerate received transaction" button that creates a CPFP transaction with an additional fee?

What you say is really unuseful because if we still have to pay for transaction accelerate, than simply pay needed fees and everything will went smooth. Also if every main pool will offer us such service and like you say that those that pay the highest fee get confirmed quickly, than that is against bitcoin users because everyone won't use that and they will get low confirm time with high fee.

Correct.

Pay a high enough fee and you won't have a problem.  Unfortunately, it is possible to think you paid enough and then later discover that you need to pay more.  That's way a miner "accelerator" with "acceleration fees" might help.  Then you can pay more if you didn't pay enough in the beginning.  I still think the RBF and CPFP wallet solutions would be better, but if the wallet creators don't do that, then this is another option.


Correct.  That is how bitcoin is designed to work.  Those that pay the most get confirmed in the next block.  Everyone else has to wait.


Correct.  If they want to get confirmed faster, they should pay more.  That is how bitcoin is designed to work.