newbie question

[urbanlights]

I tried sending a very small transfer (0.177 btc) with 0 fees, and its been unconfirmed for 3 days now.

https://blockchain.info/tx/f41674b05a6429f697b3c00a7c1f3c3ff5ffd0f937905e25f1f149044e5e8a0b

do 0 fee transactions sometimes never get verified?

[1715219393]

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[1715219393]

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[DannyHamilton]

do 0 fee transactions sometimes never get verified?

Depending on the wallet you use, yes, 0 fee transactions sometimes never get confirmed.

Some wallets (such as Bitcoin Core) will continue to rebroadcast the transaction to the network forever (unless you remove the transaction from the wallet).  The wallet will continue to remind the network about the transaction until eventually (maybe in a few days, maybe in a few weeks, maybe in a few years) some miner confirms it for you out of the charity in their heart.

Other wallets (such as blockchain.info) will simply remove the transaction from their memory if it doesn't confirm after a while.  In that case, if nobody else on the network re-broadcasts it for you, the nodes on the network will eventually drop the transaction from their memory pool and the entire network will forget that the transaction was ever sent.  In this case the bitcoins will be back in your wallet and you can try to re-send them with a higher fee.

Note that even if your wallet doesn't re-broadcast the transaction, anybody else on the network that has seen your transaction can re-broadcast it themselves if they want to.  This typically doesn't happen, because there isn't any benefit to most users to waste their time and computing power keeping track of and rebroadcasting transactions that aren't likely to confirm.  However, the recipient of your transaction might rebroadcast it to make it more difficult for you to cancel the transaction on him.

[urbanlights]

thank you! that was helpful.  i'm using armory, and that uses bitcoin core.


that means it will perpetually broadcast, right?

[equator]

I think if you use web wallet like coinbase.com site their for transaction sending their is no charges and they get confirmed but if you are using hardware or desktop wallet then you have to set a trnasaction fees according to the required fees for getting confirmed. Zero transaction fees for this type of wallet like hardware or desktop they wont get confirmed and you have to wait for it getting rejected and you get refund back and that can be delayed.

[DannyHamilton]

thank you! that was helpful.  i'm using armory, and that uses bitcoin core.


that means it will perpetually broadcast, right?

Yes, any time the online portion of Armory is running, it should re-broadcast the transaction occasionally. If you want the network to forget the transaction, you'll need to remove it from your Armory online wallet and wait for the transaction to be dropped from the memory pools of most peers.

Unfortunately, there's no way to know when the transaction will confirm.  You are completely depending on the charity in the heart of some miner or pool.  It may take minutes, hours, days, months, years, decades, or more.

I believe that Child-Pays-For-Parent (CPFP) has been implemented in the next version of the reference client. Once that version is released, if miners and pools choose to turn that feature on, then you could spend either the 74.88795231 BTC output from your transaction or the 0.17770278 BTC output.  If you include a high enough fee in that new transaction to pay for the size of both it and this earlier transaction, then any miner that implements CPFP will likely confirm both for you.

I'm not sure how soon the next version is supposed to be released though.  It may be a few months?

[groll]

I tried sending a very small transfer (0.177 btc) with 0 fees, and its been unconfirmed for 3 days now.

https://blockchain.info/tx/f41674b05a6429f697b3c00a7c1f3c3ff5ffd0f937905e25f1f149044e5e8a0b

do 0 fee transactions sometimes never get verified?

If there are no fees included your transaction is likely the least to be prioritized. But having it in three days means maybe theres a problem much more than to what you think. I suggest you consult the support to lobby your problems. Do not wait long to report it otherwise youll wait a lifetime and your bitcoin is gone in the wind. On your next transactions make sure to include miners fee for faster transactions.