Bitcoin Forum

Hi guys,

I thought I would share: last week I was able to test and successfully execute a child-pays-for-parent transaction !!! Hurraaayyy!

So let me tell you, I had this transaction which was stuck in limbo for more than 2 weeks and I totally felt helpless: I completely lost hope that it would be confirmed EVER, especially with 200k+ unconfirmed transactions at the time (it is 170k+ now, so it is little better only).

I read about those accelerators, but they were either very expensive (140USD or more), unavailable or downright scam. Or expensive and scam, both. So I decided not to use it. Then I read that you can execute a child-pays-for-parent transactions. You simply install Electrum, rightclick the transaction and do the child-pay-for-parent. It creates a new transaction, from unconfirmed output into itself, paying for both transactions generously. If a miner wants the money, they have to confirm both transactions, the one pending too.

And basically I did that. It was easy as A-B-C. I installed Electrum (I use some other wallet). I paired it with my hardware wallet. I rightclicked. I didn't want another transaction pending for 2 weeks, so I paid generously. It was ~40USD.

BUT:
1) it was my transaction, I controlled it, not some accelerator who can be a scammer for all I know
2) using the accelerator you have to make another transaction (paying the service fee) too
3) it was considerably cheaper than accelerator services (40 vs 140 USD, not counting the tx fee for paying accelerator fee)
4) and the best part: it was confirmed within 1 or 2 blocks

I wanted to share my story, so you guys who feel helpless like I did, may have a way out.

Nice! I'll have to remember that's an option.

I assume it doesn't help if the stuck transaction came from an exchange, though? Those cheapskates at HitBTC only paid 75 sat/byte for my latest withdrawal, so half a million dollars of their customers' money is now stuck in unconfirmed limbo.

Of course your option is absolutely acceptable. But there is a simpler one.
Visit the site of major liners:
1) https://passport.bitmain.com/login?service=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.antpool.com%2Fuser%2FprioritiseTransaction.htm
2) https://pool.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/
They have a service for accelerating transactions.
I used it, and they helped me.

Ty for sharing that information I was worried I would have to dig the forums in case this happened to me. Now I have a full proof way of getting it done and not scammed, again ty kindly :).

That feeling of being stuck in limbo when a transaction just isn't being confirmed is hopeless and sometimes scary. It's nice to raise awareness of what options are out there so thanks for posting this message.

Would it work if I was using a client which doesn't support child pay for parent and imported the private key into electrum or a wallet which does support it and then try it?

I was stuck in uncertainty $ 100 on a completely well-known purse JAXX. Nothing can be done about it, many people lose a lot of money. Do not leave yourself a nag, they can not be returned, just use safer translations.

No, it is actually not simpler if we consider the rate of succes.

With the CPFP trasnaction you can force a low fee tx to get confirmed.
Viatbc won't help you with that.

Furthermore, getting a spot right now with vitabtc implies refreshing every second and a blitz complete exactly on :00.
I tried once last week and my clock was showing xx:00:45 seconds and there was no space left.

With the solution above you can send it at any time you want.

They have lost everything here including their reputation so the 'best' thing they can do is to really create a mess around it. I think it can't be done right now as Lutpin has pointed out, what software they are going to used?

That's correct. In my initial post I said I have just skipped the accelerator option, but that is not exactly that simple.

I tried to use the pay ones, but the fee was astronomical.

I then tried to use the free one (viaBTC) more than a couple of times: I waited for the exact hour and I refreshed a few times, but to na avail. The other one, confirmTx, which I had used in the past for free (and with success, I must admit) now started charging even for smallish transactions and well.... let me just say that opinions on what you buy with your money vary...

I think it would. He said he was using a hardware wallet so no need for all that fuss importing private keys.

IMPORTANT: But make sure you actually import the private key, not sweep it, beacuse you'll only make matters worse. If you don't know the difference between the two, don't attempt it.

And then, after your cpfp transaction has been succesfully executed, and after you have made sure that the money is still in the same public address controlled by the same private key:
1. backup your Electrum wallet (Satoshi advised: never delete your wallet)
2. deinstall that Electrum instance, you don't want your money to be controlled by two overlapping sets of different private keys in two wallets.

I generally recommend using the hardware wallet. It is cheap (compared to bitcoin price nowadays, at least) and it gives you a completely new level of security and control and: freedom to change wallet providers (as it turns out, I din't actually know that beforehand).

How does a stuck transaction manifests?
I tried sending some tokens and I can see the transactions on and off https://etherscan.io/tx/0xd9ec1b20c8d959ca95609bd0ee9fa6c2cf7321f160b4689580519440daebd4cb tokens are still I my wallet through, were you in the same case?

You should not wait for xx:00:45 but max. xx:00:01 and the free spots are taken... I was trying to accelerate a transaction last week with ViaBTC. I took days trying (I was not in a hurry) without success... After, I had a look at the system time and it was delayed by 30 or 40 seconds.... After synchronization, my system time was OK and I was lucky enough to catch one spot right between xx:00:00 and 01, so the timing is the key (and the luck of course...)
I was not in a hurry, so I took it calm, but I can imagine that someone is really upset and has an urgent transaction, that won't help with the exact timing...

You know that there are a lot of outputs in there right? If you want, you can easily do it, since it is a normal transaction only that it got executed by an exchange.

It will cost you more than thousands of dollars, since it was 75 satoshis per byte, per customer.

So maybe the bytes of that transaction are more than 10000 in total, this will cost you a fortune, maybe more than thousand of dollars (no more than $1000)

agreed, that such a transaction may not be the best candidate for CPFP. But still, it is not a good candidate for an accelerator, either...

I was thinking that the exchanges would take care to emmit the transactions that would quickly confirm... well, I was naive, it seems.

The way it manifests is simple. Somebody sends you the money, for instance let's assume that in your example it would be sent to
Contract 0x1a95b271b0535d15fa49932daba31ba612b52946 (MinereumToken). Then it shows as unconfirmed transaction in the block explorer for days or weeks. You check it every day and every hour and it is unconfirmed and you grow more and more desperate.

This is what I call a stuck transaction.

Of course, I am not sure if child pays for parent works for Ethereum network too. My OP was intended for Bitcoin users and if it was not clear, I am sorry to have caused confusion.

Also, currently the network is not stuck anymore :)

 :)

no it won't work with Ethereum and most of the altcoins out there because they have not yet admitted they have scaling problem and CPFP is a way to ease the issue for users and miners have to be looking for these transactions, there are even some bitcoin miners have not yet implemented this.