Electrum sending unconfirmed bitcoins

[dave111223]

Case for example:

1) I send some bitcoins to someone
2) Transaction shows as pending in my Electrum, and also shows up as unconfirmed on blockchain.info
3) I send some more bitcoins to someone else (before the first transaction confirms)
4) 2nd transaction shows as pending also in my Electrum

However only the 1st transaction shows up in the blockchain at blockchain.info or blockexplorer.   Until after the first transaction has been confirmed a few times then the second transaction randomly appears...

So person #2 thinks that I have not yet sent them anything, because the transaction appears only in my Electrum, but no one else on the network sees it yet.

It can be especially annoying if you need to send funds to lots of different people in quick succession.

Can anyone explain what is the deal with the missing/hiding transaction #2?

[Stephen Gornick]

Can anyone explain what is the deal with the missing/hiding transaction #2?

Peers won't relay certain transactions, including ones in which the amount is below 0.01 BTC and no fee is paid, or ones which are invalid because the "parent" transaction assignment hasn't been seen before.

Is this possibly what happened?

[dave111223]

Can anyone explain what is the deal with the missing/hiding transaction #2?

Peers won't relay certain transactions, including ones in which the amount is below 0.01 BTC and no fee is paid, or ones which are invalid because the "parent" transaction assignment hasn't been seen before.

Is this possibly what happened?

The amounts were all well above 0.01BTC (such as 1BTC, 2BTC etc...) and I included fees, but still the network will only see the first transaction.

[SnowDog2003]

I've had this problem several times myself, and I think it has to do with the fact that Electrum sends its transactions to a single server; whereas the Satoshi client, and other clients, broadcast the transaction to multiple servers. Because you're sending the transaction to a single server with Electrum, that server may, or may not, propagate the transaction for various reasons, including no fees, fees too small, and maybe it holds transactions which have inputs which have not yet hit the blockchain. For this reason, I always use another client when sending out multiple transactions. I like Electrum a lot because it's deterministic, allows for the easy import and export of independent keys, allows you to 'freeze' addresses, and it opens quickly; but there is a problem when sending out multiple transactions.

[ThomasV]

Case for example:

1) I send some bitcoins to someone
2) Transaction shows as pending in my Electrum, and also shows up as unconfirmed on blockchain.info
3) I send some more bitcoins to someone else (before the first transaction confirms)
4) 2nd transaction shows as pending also in my Electrum

However only the 1st transaction shows up in the blockchain at blockchain.info or blockexplorer.   Until after the first transaction has been confirmed a few times then the second transaction randomly appears...

So person #2 thinks that I have not yet sent them anything, because the transaction appears only in my Electrum, but no one else on the network sees it yet.

It can be especially annoying if you need to send funds to lots of different people in quick succession.

Can anyone explain what is the deal with the missing/hiding transaction #2?

this is strange... are you sure that your observation is correct? is this reproducible?
if the second transaction showed up in your history, it means that your server has accepted it.
Servers are regular Bitcoin nodes, so they will relay your transaction to the Bitcoin network.

[flatfly]

Case for example:

1) I send some bitcoins to someone
2) Transaction shows as pending in my Electrum, and also shows up as unconfirmed on blockchain.info
3) I send some more bitcoins to someone else (before the first transaction confirms)
4) 2nd transaction shows as pending also in my Electrum

However only the 1st transaction shows up in the blockchain at blockchain.info or blockexplorer.   Until after the first transaction has been confirmed a few times then the second transaction randomly appears...

So person #2 thinks that I have not yet sent them anything, because the transaction appears only in my Electrum, but no one else on the network sees it yet.

It can be especially annoying if you need to send funds to lots of different people in quick succession.

Can anyone explain what is the deal with the missing/hiding transaction #2?

this is strange... are you sure that your observation is correct? is this reproducible?
if the second transaction showed up in your history, it means that your server has accepted it.
Servers are regular Bitcoin nodes, so they will relay your transaction to the Bitcoin network.

Hey, I observed the exact same thing yesterday. Didn't have time to further investigate.
It eventually (as soon as the next block was resolved, I believe) went through without having to re-create the transaction.

Still, I had never noticed that behavior before.

[ThomasV]

Hey, I observed the exact same thing yesterday. Didn't have time to further investigate.
It eventually (as soon as the next block was resolved, I believe) went through without having to re-create the transaction.

All right, I can see the problem:
A transaction with unconfirmed inputs is not visible on blockchain.info, even though it was propagated among Electrum servers.

it seems to be a bug with blockchain.info, not with Electrum.  you are not reporting it at the right place

[dave111223]

Hey, I observed the exact same thing yesterday. Didn't have time to further investigate.
It eventually (as soon as the next block was resolved, I believe) went through without having to re-create the transaction.

All right, I can see the problem:
A transaction with unconfirmed inputs is not visible on blockchain.info, even though it was propagated among Electrum servers.

it seems to be a bug with blockchain.info, not with Electrum.  you are not reporting it at the right place

Transaction doesn't show up on https://blockexplorer.com/ either.

Also transaction doesn't show up in other people bitcoin clients (not sure if they were using Electrum or other client), but they complained about not being able to see the transaction.

So it's not limited to just an issue with blockchain.info

[ThomasV]

Transaction doesn't show up on https://blockexplorer.com/ either.

I do not think that blockexplorer shows unconfirmed transactions at all.

Also transaction doesn't show up in other people bitcoin clients

which client are they using?

[SnowDog2003]

I've seen this problem a lot, and for me it always seems to occur when there's a string of transactions, of which one, will not be propagated by the server with whom I'm connected. If I send, say, ten transactions out rapidly, for small amounts, and one of them doesn't have any associated fee, then this transaction may not be propagated by the server that I'm connected with. If this is so, then the rest of the transactions will not propagate either. If I wait for 24 hours or so, then the zero fee transaction will then propagate, as will all the rest. This doesn't happen with other clients.

I think some Electrum servers are refusing to propagate transactions for various reasons. It might be a good idea to ensure that all transactions are broadcast widely, somehow.

[cp1]

I just had this problem:  I don't use a change address.  I had 0.25 BTC in one address (A).  I sent two identical transactions, one minute apart, of 0.1 BTC (0.0002 fee) to address B.  One transaction started confirming immediately.  The other didn't start confirming until the first had about 30 confirmations.  Is there a way to have both start confirming instead?

[Gaim]

Hi,
I'm encountering the same issue.

I sent 0.02 + 0.00001 BTC to address A, and 1 minute later I entered a 2nd transaction to address B (same fixed source wallet) amount 0.02 + 0.00003 BTC.

First transaction is confirmed, 2nd transaction is pending since 2013-05-03 10:28 .

The trx-ID can't be found on blockchain, too

(I'm connected to carmen.sytes.net )

regards Gaim

[grendel25]

yeah, I had these same problems and I'm sorry but I need a more efficient and time effective way to pay for goods.  This is the type of bullsh!t that kills BTC value.  Can't have gobbledeegook going on with servers where it jeopardizes a double payment.

[dabura667]

yeah, I had these same problems and I'm sorry but I need a more efficient and time effective way to pay for goods.  This is the type of bullsh!t that kills BTC value.  Can't have gobbledeegook going on with servers where it jeopardizes a double payment.

I've paid three different people within 1 minute using 3 separate transactions on my Electrum client on many occasions, and never had a problem.

The only way I could imagine it ever having a problem would be if you tried to send 3 different transactions within milliseconds of each other, and the first transaction didn't have enough time to go to the bitcoin network and come back (it needs to do this to check whether the network will accept your transaction or not) and so the 3 transactions you made are all referencing the same bitcoin (in other words, you inadvertently made 2 double spend attempts, and the network rejected them)

Other than that, the only thing I could say would be to post screenshots of the transaction details screen of each transaction... then we can see what's going wrong maybe?