Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

This might be a weird question, but I have a transaction stuck in the blockchain for 5 days now that the sender sent with too low a fee associated. It doesn't have RBF enabled, so I'm wondering if it is possible for me to personally contact a miner and pay them an extra fee in order to help confirm this transaction? Thanks for any help.

Take note that individual miners have no control over choosing transactions that are included in a block and you should ask mining pool operators to include your transaction.

ViaBTC has such a service and you can pay them to include your transaction in the next block by them, but they usually charge a very big fee.
https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator

Do you have control over the address you received the fund on?
If the address doesn't belong to a custodial service like an exchange and you own its private key, you can import your private key in a wallet that allow you to spend unconfirmed outputs like electrum and do CPFP.

Actually, they can, If the individual miners are mining solo and have a full node they can add a transaction they like.
The only problem is if they only have a few units to mine it won't be enough to find and mine a block faster.
It needs a huge mining power to be able to solve a block faster and confirm transactions.

@OP the chances of finding someone here who mines solo are very slim. Most of the small miners nowadays are mining directly to a mining pool which is why you can only request to prioritize your transaction to a mining pool operator like the one mentioned above (Viabtc).

OP, I think your best course of action would be to try a CPFP (Child Pays for Parent) transaction, just as hosseinimr93 recommended.

Well, Actually, they can even if they were not solo mining but using Stratum V2, which has a protocol called "Job selection", The pool only sends the prevhash to the miners while the miners prepare the transactions they want to include beforehand, of course, this has to go into a negotiation process before the template is approved by the pool (to check if the transaction included are valid), but it's there, and I think it's only a matter of time before some large pools start using it.

Paying someone else to include a transaction is completely pointless with bitcoin for a while now.
You simply use that extra payment and RBF the transaction.
Bitcoin effectively allows RBF of any transaction.

As there are many nodes that have enabled full RBF and there are mining pools that accept replacement transaction even if the original transaction has not been flagged as RBF, it's possible to replace any unconfirmed bitcoin transaction with a new one paying higher fee. But that can be done only by the sender.
If OP has control over the receiving address, he/she can do CPFP. Otherwise, the only way to accelerate the transaction is to pay a mining pool, so that they prioritize the transaction.  

Assuming you have control of the sending wallet. If I send to you with a low fee and then for whatever reason stop responding you have to wait.
You can do a CPFP if you have control of the receiving wallet and it allows for spending unconfirmed TX, otherwise you have to import the private key.

All well and good for people that know and care.

But if you are not a person that regularly uses BTC and just wound up having some sent to you, then it's a different story.

It was the OPs 1st and only post. RPF / CPFP and so on can take a bit to understand. Pay someone (pool) to do something (mine transaction) is simple.

-Dave

As he said "It doesn't have RBF enabled"

So I pointed out the obvious that now all transactions 'can' be RBF'd.

So while it may or may not be possible for him to have the transaction RBF'd by the sender,
he has stated the term RBF in the opening post ...

If he has no control over it and was intelligent enough to say "RBF" in the opening post, then doing a Child Pays for Parent is the other option.

Assuming he's ignorant of what RBF/etc are seems a silly thing to do when he's used the term in his opening post.