Need some help, dusting error?

[Kale77]

Hello,

I've been using bitcoin with Electrum for a while, and tried to send a transaction today and got this message when I hit send:

"The server returned an error when broadcasting the transaction. Consider trying to connect to a different server, or updating Electrum. Transaction could not be broadcast due to dust outputs."

I'm new to Bitcoin so I apologize if this is obvious or is addressed elsewhere here (I've searched), but what does this mean? I've found this, but its explanation is a bit over my head. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2unzen/what_is_bitcoins_dust_limit_precisely/ How do I fix this error? I'm running the latest version. Again, my apologies for such a novice question but I'm at a loss. Any help is appreciated.

[TryNinja]

You are trying to spend dust outputs (basically, when you receive multiple small transactions which will cost more in fees to spend than what they are worth). Where you receiving coins from faucets or a mining pool?

Can you try your tx again, but instead of clicking "Send", click on "Preview", then "Copy" and paste it here? Or take a screenshot of the Preview window.

Edit: not inputs

[ranochigo]

The dust output means that your transaction contains outputs with amounts that is below the dust threshold. The current dust threshold as per the reference client is 546 satoshis. The network intentionally do not allow transactions with outputs that is too low to avoid users inflating the size of UTXO and/or the blockchain and outputs with such a small amount are usually fairly useless.

I'm fairly sure Electrum avoids this and absorbs the change into the fees if it detects that the change is dust. Are you sending someone dust?

[HCP]

You are trying to spend dust inputs (basically, when you receive multiple small transactions which will cost more in fees to spend than what they are worth). Where you receiving coins from faucets or a mining pool?

It's not inputs... you can spend whatever you like.

It's outputs... the Electrum server is refusing the transaction because it is attempting to generate a dust output. As Abdussamad mentioned recently, this is commonly caused because Electrum defaults to mBTC units instead of BTC units.

The result being that a user enters "0.005" to send as a test or whatever... thinking they're putting 0.005 BTC... but because it's actually mBTC, they're attempting to send: 0.00000500 BTC Electrum server then rejects because of "dust output"


@Kale77... goto: "Tools -> Preferences -> General"... then set the "Base unit" to BTC (and "zeros after decimal point" to 8 ). And then try sending your transaction again