Bitcoin Forum

I'm trying to send bitcoin, I've already signed, just getting this error when i broadcast, but the send still says "paid"
history says error.
please help, here is the error message below.

------------------------------------
Error
The server returned an error when broadcasting the transaction.
Consider trying to connect to a different server, or updating Electrum.

mempool min fee not met
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

the amount of fee you are paying in your transaction is smaller than the minimum fee that the server you are connected to requires.

if your fee is not smaller than 1 satoshi/byte then you can try switching servers and try to broadcast the same transaction with another server. if it is then you have no other way but to increase it to above 1 satoshi/byte.

if all servers rejected your transaction then you have two choices either increase the fee to the recommended one so that it both gets accepted by the node and is confirmed fast or wait so that maybe mempool is cleared more so that you can pay less fee.

If you're using an old version of Electrum it won't connect to the servers.  You need to be running version 3.3.8 or newer.  Make sure to download the newer version from the correct source and verify it's authenticity.  

Here's a guide that will help: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5240594.0

The problem is that there are so many unconfirmed transactions at the moment, that nodes which are running the default mempool settings have mempools which are full. If your transaction does not pay a higher fee than the lowest fee transaction currently in the mempool, then it will not be accepted. Your transaction needs to pay a fee high enough to expel another transaction out of the bottom of the mempool and take its place.

At the moment, according to https://mempool.space, everything below 6.9 sats/vbyte is being purged. Your transaction will need to pay a minimum of 7 sats/vbyte to meet the minimum fee and be accepted. Having said all that, even if accepted at 7 sat/vbyte, it could very well be expelled by a higher fee transaction, and even if that doesn't happen it won't confirm any time soon.

You would be better either paying a much higher fee to get confirmed soon - somewhere in the region of 80 sats/vbyte - or just waiting until the mempool empties.

i don't think you would see any errors at all when you use older versions because there was a bug in them that they got stuck and couldn't do anything network related.
also the old versions didn't show error messages like this telling user to upgrade electrum.

I tend to agree with the comment above, check first the required transaction fee because that might one cause of your problem that you can't able to process your transaction.  But I have doubt there's another reason aside from the transaction fee.

First, check if you are in the latest version and it should version 4.0.9 at the official download website of Electrum (https://electrum.org/#download) and you should always do a PGP validation and you will be fine.

Second, check the round button on the right side, it should be a green color that means connected to the network, not a red one, see this image as a sample.
https://i.imgur.com/duPjNwq.png


Edited: I saw and noticed this in your post;
"mempool min fee not met" it's a typo error but it means "mine fee not met".  It makes sense now, its about the FEES.

It will even be better to use the latest version which is 4.0.9, but your idea is also correct but using the latest version 4.0 and up will be best for new support.

 The person should try to increase the fee paid, the mempool congestion can cause this if the fee is low.

It's not a typo. It refers to the variable mempoolminfee in the bitcoin code, which is the minimum fee needed for your transaction to be accepted to the mempool of the node you are connected to. You can see how this variable is defined in the code here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/767bb7d5c56b5e3841fcb1cd04e846c485b4f1c5/src/rpc/blockchain.cpp#L1522


This essentially means the fee that you pay has to be higher than both the minimum fee set by the node (which defaults to 1 sat/vbyte), and higher than the fee below which everything is being purged, as I explained in my post above.

o_e_l_e_o is correct... it's a mechanism used to try and keep the mempool "size" to below 300 Megabytes... Transactions with very very low fees will either not be accepted or be "purged" if the "mempoolminfee" increases to a value higher than the transaction.

If you look here: https://statoshi.info:3000/d/000000020/memory-pool?orgId=1 (check last graph)
and here: https://mempool.space/
https://talkimg.com/images/2023/11/15/zIFZg.png

You'll see that this value is currently around 7 sats/byte... any transaction with a fee less than this will either not be accepted... or purged if it was already in a node's mempool.

Note that this value is not the same as the "minrelaytxfee" (which usually defaults to 1 sat/byte)

What kind of fee is this "minrelaytxfee"?

Why did I always allow you to always send for 1 Satoshi\byte, since what day are such innovations on the bitcoin network now?

I was having this problem last week when I was trying to consolidate some really small payments that I had received. i wanted to see how low of a fee I could get away with so I ended up copying the raw transaction and broadcasting it from several block explorer websites. BTC.com and mempool.space will allow you to broadcast a transaction with a fee of 1 sat/vbyte but BTC.com will get rid of it after a few days.

The minrelaytxfee option has been around since at least 2013, but even before then there was a minimum fee required to broadcast low value transactions.

The first fee requirement stated that any transaction creating an output of less than 0.01 BTC was required to pay a fee of 0.0005 BTC per every 1000 bytes of transaction data (rounded up). This was decreased from 0.0005 BTC to 0.0001 BTC in Bitcoin-Qt 0.8.2, and then to 0.00001 BTC (1000 sats) in Bitcoin Core 0.9.0. This is the same level it sits today, at 1000 sats per kilobyte, or 1 sat/byte.

It is not a fee per se but it is a restriction of the transaction fees.

1sat/byte wasn't the minimum fee in the past, free transactions were possible. As long as your transaction cannot meet the criteria of a free transaction, there must be a minimum fee for the transactions to be relayed by the nodes with default parameters. Since it's defined in the default settings, changing it by the owner would also result in some transactions being accepted (if decreased) or some transactions being rejected (if increased). This is specific to individual nodes but the 1sat/vbyte is assumed to be adopted by most of the nodes on the network and thus it is the minimum fee for a good propagation.

How to send a transaction via mempool. space?

Now shows on the site https://mempool.space/ that the minimal fee is 1 satoshi \ byte but still cannot send the transaction - the same error.

https://pasteboard.co/JUZpsr7.png

Each node has its own mempool with its own settings. So we don't know what are the settings of the node you are connected to.
(I would also try out with 1.1 sat/vbyte, but that's me)

Nope, it's not or perhaps their settings is slightly different.

Both Statoshi and my nodes are indicating it to be slightly more than 1.9sat/vbyte. You can check my node's info for something that indicates the default settings and thus the general node population: http://163.172.57.208/getmempoolinfo.txt.

I would probably expect it to be purged again after the TX volume rises by the mid week, if that happens just broadcast it again. Don't think ~2sat/vbyte has any chance for a confirmation given the current situation.

It seems that mempool.space has changed that value from "Purging" to "Minimum fee", which doesn't really make sense given it is still showing the mempool being 415 MB, and so obviously low fee transactions are still being purged.

If you take a look at the "Default Mempool" setting on Jochen's site (https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),8h,weight), you can see the lowest band visible is for transactions paying 2+ sat/vbyte, which matches ranochigo's node as above.

If you want the transaction to have any prospect of confirming within the next few days, I'd go for at least 6 sats/vbyte.

It turns out https://mempool.space/ you can no longer watch it once it shows inaccurately. http://163.172.57.208/getmempoolinfo.txt. will dynamically update there? Can I go look for when there will be 1 Satoshi byte?

Looking at it now, it seems it has again flipped back to saying "Purging", with a value of < 2.2 sats/vbyte, which again matches up with Jochen's site. I'm not sure why it changed and changed back? Perhaps their mempool size limit is slightly larger than standard so they were accepting transaction with lower fees which other nodes were rejecting? Or perhaps once the "Purging" value drops below 2 sats/vbyte, it simply ignores it and states a minimum fee of 1 sat/vbyte.

You can still use https://mempool.space/, just pay attention to the Memory usage. Once it is less than 300 MB, then low fee transaction will stop being purged. Or you can use https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),8h,weight, and just watch for when the 1-2 sat/vbyte band shows up again at the bottom of the graph.

However, waiting for this time and then broadcasting your transaction at 1 sat/vbyte is probably unlikely to achieve very much. Worst case scenario it will just get purged when the mempool fills up again; best case scenario you are waiting weeks for the mempool to empty down to 1 sat/vbyte.

Probably not the case.
I update it via a script every 5 minutes, but I'll lower it. Probably wouldn't matter as long as the update interval is somewhat reasonable.

I'll say that your method will have limited effectiveness, if you consider the current situation. Being able to broadcast your transaction entails that the total mempool will be less than 90~100vMB or so depending on overheads. When you're able to broadcast it, it'll probably be when there are only 1 sat/vbyte transactions left in the mempool and all of the others were mined by a miner. This definitely won't happen overnight and even if miners were to mine successive blocks, which is unlikely to be sufficient, there is little chance of your 1 sat/vbyte transaction (currently there is 90vMB+ of transactions paying 2sat/vbyte or more) being confirmed even if it gets relayed. After it gets relayed, if the minmempoolfee increases at the slightest, your 1sat/vbyte transaction would be evicted again and the whole process repeats.

Just to put things into perspective and help you manage your optimism.