High transaction Fees in blockchain

[Pokapoka124]

I made a transaction from my blockchain wallet some days back and was charged unusually high fees. I couldn't understand it 
Is there a wallet with less or no transaction fee? I'd save a lot using such a wallet.

[ranochigo]

Yes. Blockchain.com's wallet is notorious for having poor fees estimate as well as poor support in general. I don't think they offer Segwit? I'm not too sure about that. Please stop using Blockchain's wallet.

Using a Segwit compatible wallet would decrease the fees needed substantially. You can try Bitcoin Core, or SPV wallets like Electrum and Wasabi wallet. Having no transaction fees is impossible. You could have some centralised services offering that but they usually have some catch as well.

[Charles-Tim]

I am not a fan of blockchain, but according to blockchain wallet support writeup, I found this:

Your Blockchain wallet will automatically calculate the appropriate fee for sending your chosen cryptocurrency. The fee for sending ether is static (you can view the fee for sending ether by clicking “Send” and selecting Ether as the currency), while the fees for sending bitcoin, bitcoin cash, and stellar are dynamic and will be calculated by your wallet after you input the amount you want to send. This article explains bitcoin transaction fees in greater detail.

Normally, miners are the ones that determine the fee in accordance to mempool congestion. While you are not able to edit the fee on blockchain wallet and yet sending with the estimated fee by the blockchain wallet itself, the transaction ought to be fast which should be 10 minutes in average with high fee. The conclusion is just that blockchain wallet fee esitmate is poor.

Use better wallet, if you can not buy hardware wallet like trezor or ledger nano, you can still make use of electrum wallet which have good and standard fee estimation. You can even still make use of fee customization in addition unlike blockchain wallet.

[Upgrade00]

Is there a wallet with less or no transaction fee? I'd save a lot using such a wallet.

No, there is no such wallet, but there are actions you can take to save more on fees in the future:

• Consolidating small inputs; increase in fees are caused by high activity on the network and this is usually influenced by heavy spikes or drops in market prices when many people are trying to buy or sell. However during times when there's relatively less activity or the mempool gets cleared, feerates of as low as 1sat/byte can get a transaction conformed in good time.
During these times consolidate your inputs by sending them as a single UTXO to another of your address. This would mean your tx size would be much lower when you are sending out from that address in the future, and would reduce the fees paid.
• Use a segwit address

For more info on how fees work check out this excerpt from a thread I made (you can also read the full thread to understand the terms used):

How to minimize transaction fees?

With the current spike in fees, many would be interested in ways to reduce the fees. To reduce the fees one or both of the variable involve has to be reduced.
The standard feerate is determined by the level of activity in the network, so;
• timing your transactions can result in significantly lower fees. During a FOMO period, lots of investors are looking to get in and more traders are active, this is probably not a good time to transact, if it's not time sensitive, when the resulting activity cools, the feerate would also reduce, leading to lower transaction fees.

Reducing the transaction size would also reduce the fees incurred, this can be done through a couple of ways:
• Reducing the number of inputs: the higher the number of inputs involved in a transaction, the higher the size, so to reduce the size, less inputs should be spent.
If I receive 0.4BTC and spend that in a single transaction, the size would be smaller than a 0.2BTC transaction comprising two separate inputs (0.1,0.1BTC).

• Batching receptients : add multiple receiving addresses to a single transaction saves more cost than sending them in separate transactions.

• Consolidateling inputs and outputs: when an entire input involved in a transaction is not spent, this creates the need for a change address to receive the unspent coins. Spending the exact amount of an input would eliminate the need for a change address hence reducing the amount of outputs and also the transaction size.

Note that, inputs weigh more in a transaction and reducing them should be prioritized when looking to reduce fees.

[NeuroticFish]

All in all there's no best solution for everybody.

Clearly some wallets do better job than others estimating the necessary fee.
Possibly some custodian wallets, if you send coins between users on the same platform may not ask for any fees, since the operation is off-chain; but I don't advise such wallets (not your keys, not your coins).

There are wallets where you can also set the fee you want, but you have to pay attention, since nowadays there are many transactions and if you pay low fee yours may not be confirmed for long time (or not at all).

Normally, consolidating the fees and sending transactions during week-ends used to be pretty much a rule that worked; but this week-end still has ~2$ tx fees (much lower than 2 days ago, still higher than maybe 5-10 sat/vbyte), although for now they are decreasing.

Again, there's not a best solution. Consider using a wallet like Electrum, consider watching websites like https://mempool.space/ and try to understand what they display (hence what happens on the blockchain and mempool) and you'll life may get easier.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

I made a transaction from my blockchain wallet some days back and was charged unusually high fees. I couldn't understand it 
Is there a wallet with less or no transaction fee? I'd save a lot using such a wallet.

It is naturally and very common when bitcoin has its rises or falls, people will be in hurry and companies will charge you higher fees than usual. It is acceptable because the average transaction fees on the network is higher than usual. Unfortunately, in such situation, companies tend to give users convenience, fast and smooth transactions and they don't care to give users options to save a little fees.

They likely do not want to see pressure on their support systems or customer service but hey blockchain wallet is not the one I would like to use.
https://electrum.org/#download
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.electrum.electrum (you can easily find the link on the download page, don't trust the link I gave you, and don't search Electrum wallet on Google play, you will be phished by fake apps).

[GUIDE] How to Safely Download and Verify Electrum

[Lucius]

Normally, miners are the ones that determine the fee in accordance to mempool congestion.

Wrong. It is not the miners who determine how much fee will be paid for a particular transaction, they only choose the transactions from mempool with the highest fee - and the amount of fees is the result of users competing to get confirmation of their transaction as soon as possible.

While you are not able to edit the fee on blockchain wallet and yet sending with the estimated fee by the blockchain wallet itself, the transaction ought to be fast which should be 10 minutes in average with high fee. The conclusion is just that blockchain wallet fee esitmate is poor.

Wrong. Speaking of blockchain.com, there are three ways a fee can be set. The default setting is Regular, but that can be changed to Priority and Custom.

You can choose between a Priority fee and a Regular fee. The Priority fee is calculated to get your transaction included in a block within the hour. The Regular fee is lower, and is for users who can afford to be a bit more patient; a confirmation for a transaction that includes a Regular fee will typically take a bit more than an hour.
Advanced users can set custom fees for their transaction in units of satoshi per byte (sat/b) by pressing Customize Fee and entering an amount.

Use better wallet, if you can not buy hardware wallet like trezor or ledger nano, you can still make use of electrum wallet which have good and standard fee estimation. You can even still make use of fee customization in addition unlike blockchain wallet.

Maybe the Electrum fee algorithm is a little better, but not so much better that in the past few days we haven’t seen at least a dozen members whose transaction is stuck precisely because they used Electrum. The bottom line is that no wallet will be good enough to calculate a fee at a given time - so as long as people don't learn what is mempool, input/output, transaction size and the type of address they use, they won't avoid such problems.

[Findingnemo]

Maybe the Electrum fee algorithm is a little better, but not so much better that in the past few days we haven’t seen at least a dozen members whose transaction is stuck precisely because they used Electrum. The bottom line is that no wallet will be good enough to calculate a fee at a given time - so as long as people don't learn what is mempool, input/output, transaction size and the type of address they use, they won't avoid such problems.

Electrum gives wrong fee estimation when we uses ETA option while selecting the fee.Either they will show over killing fee or under required fee and but when we see the fee to Mempool option it gives the nearest fee required to the actual one.

But why we are not analyzing the required fee by ourselves before making a transaction?

[ranochigo]

Electrum gives wrong fee estimation when we uses ETA option while selecting the fee.Either they will show over killing fee or under required fee and but when we see the fee to Mempool option it gives the nearest fee required to the actual one.

But why we are not analyzing the required fee by ourselves before making a transaction?

There's no right or wrong estimation. Electrum's estimation accounts for the possible disparity at instantaneous data points due to various factors. As a result, it tends to be more conservative than other methods, and rightfully so. It is more geared towards those who needs their transaction to be confirmed within X blocks with a high degree of certainty. I've never seen it being smaller than mempool estimation method.

Mempool displays the actual mempool conditions at that instantaneous moment. There is pretty much no wrong answer; what it displays will reflect roughly the actual mempool's situation. You have to take the calculated risks because AFAIK, it won't account for the factors like the avg time between the blocks and history of the fees market. I don't recommend people using mempool unless they know exactly what they're doing and/or they're prepared to wait slightly longer for their transaction to be confirmed.

[Findingnemo]

You have to take the calculated risks because AFAIK, it won't account for the factors like the avg time between the blocks and history of the fees market. I don't recommend people using mempool unless they know exactly what they're doing and/or they're prepared to wait slightly longer for their transaction to be confirmed.

I am also used Mempool option very few times, I just go with static once I find what is the required fee from mempool analyzing sites with something near to the actual required fee.But newbies have to be careful when using the mempool especially when the network is congested with more blocks.

[Peanutswar]

You cannot escape the transaction fee because it's part of their job, lets take a look at the perspective of them ask yourself do you want to work without payment? of course, the answer is no, the same with them, all you can do is to lessen the transaction fee the lowest in the 1 sat/byte but it takes time before fully confirmed, always checks the mempool if there are a lot of unconfirmed transaction I do not prefer the 50 sat/byte or lower it takes time to confirm still its depend on your time if you want to rush immediately go with the higher tx fee. again YOU CANNOT ESCAPE TRANSACTION FEE.

[khaled0111]

Is there a wallet with less or no transaction fee?

The fee you pay for your transaction doesn't depend on the wallet you use but depends on the network status.
However, there are wallets that let you customise your fees.
Zero-fee transactions will be rejected by the network because most nodes have the minimum relay value set to "1" by default.

[pooya87]

Is there a wallet with less or no transaction fee?

The fee you pay for your transaction doesn't depend on the wallet you use but depends on the network status.

Technically this is correct but it does depend on the wallet you use too.
Wallets are responsible for analyzing the memory pool and suggesting the most appropriate fee. A bad wallet that does a bad job at this analysis or a malicious wallet that intentionally inflates fees will report back wrong fees and the user ends up paying higher or lower than "normal" fees.
In this case blockchain.com has always been pretty bad at suggesting fees.

[Upgrade00]

A bad wallet that does a bad job at this analysis or a malicious wallet that intentionally inflates fees will report back wrong fees and the user ends up paying higher or lower than "normal" fees.

The purpose of this inflation of fees I think is to account for possible spike in transactions being added to the mempool after yours. I once used electrum's suggested fee, which was accurate at the time of the transaction and would have gotten it confirmed in ~30 mins to 2 hours, however Bitcoin's price spiked just after this leading to high activity on the network and more priority txs being added, mine ended up being confirmed about 3 days later.

I'm not defending blockchain.com in particular as I have never used their service, but that is probably the reason most wallets which do, estimate much higher fees as that could easily be blamed on the Bitcoin network, but newbies would likely blame the wallet estimator for a delayed transaction. The more wallets suggest higher fees, the more users pay such fees, increasing the average amount for everyone.

There are suggestion that exchange wallet services could be taking a commission from the fees, but I cannot confirm this.

[tranthidung]

There are suggestion that exchange wallet services could be taking a commission from the fees, but I cannot confirm this.

No public evidence to confirm it but if you have interests in, you can follow it up. You need to record the suggested fee (on the same chain of each cryptocurrency) in different times: when the transaction fee on the network is low; and when the transaction fee on the network is high.

Compares the fee suggested by the exchange you are using. If it is a big diffeerence and repeats many times, you can have unofficial evidence that the specific exchange suggests a fixed withdrawal fee rates (includes their service fee and transaction fee) to get commissions for themselves.

I meant compares the fees between Normal and Expensive periods on the network and the suggested or minimum withdrawal fee on the companies at the same time. Make some repetitions of comparison and see. (with bitcoin transaction, you can collect the data on Wednesday and Sunday, follow it up about 1 or 2 months to have enough sample size. I choose 2 days because usually they are most crowded and empty day on the bitcoin network)

Afaik, companies tend to use a fixed or static fee rates when you submit your withdrawal (and you must withdraw the amount higher than that min threshold).

Reminder

• Do it for yourself and don't publish it if you are not anonymous. It relates to exchanges and you can be attacked. Remember the report on fake/ wash volume and serious attacks after that.

[ibuddy122505]

I didn't expect it, just take a look what kind of horrible and frightening transaction fees charges in blockchain. It's obvious not as usual and I can relate your feeling. It's my utter priority to get relief from this things and won't never back again in blockchain.

[Eureka_07]

I made a transaction from my blockchain wallet some days back and was charged unusually high fees. I couldn't understand it 
Is there a wallet with less or no transaction fee? I'd save a lot using such a wallet.

AFAIK, the more that the mempool is congested, the higher the fee becomes. Those people who sents bitcoin to other addresses are competing with each other to be prioritized. If you chose to only pay for the lowest possible fee, or the 1 satoshi per byte transaction fee, expect that you're almost at the least priority to be confirmed. I experienced it months ago, it took about a week before the transaction has been finally confirmed.

[dzungmobile]

I didn't expect it, just take a look what kind of horrible and frightening transaction fees charges in blockchain. It's obvious not as usual and I can relate your feeling. It's my utter priority to get relief from this things and won't never back again in blockchain.

The regular fee is killing user but you need to hide or hour your address and your balance. It is for your privacy.
I skip the image because of this.

[HCP]

I didn't expect it, just take a look what kind of horrible and frightening transaction fees charges in blockchain. It's obvious not as usual and I can relate your feeling. It's my utter priority to get relief from this things and won't never back again in blockchain.

Is your 0.014+ BTC balance made up of a lot of small value receive amounts?

If so, that would explain the ridiculous fee being suggested by blockchain.com... people just don't seem to understand, that the fee is calculated from the data size of their transaction... not the monetary or BTC value.

Data Size * Fee Rate selected == Total Fee used.

If you have a lot of inputs into your transaction (because you received 10s or 100s of tiny amounts from mining or faucets etc) then the data size of your transaction increases significantly (regardless of the amount of BTC being transacted).

It should be obvious from the mathematical equation above that if you significantly increase the Data Size (or the Fee Rate), that your total fee is going to also be significantly larger. It also doesn't help that the network has been extremely busy as of late, so fee rates increased as well.


This is the problem that wallet developers face...

- err on the side of "high fees" to try and get quick confirmation times - users complain about high fees
- err on the side of "low fees" to try and keep user costs down - users complain their transactions are stuck because wallet selected too low fees