Electrum Wallet "Low Fee"

[mrbittybunkr]

Today, 24 May 2017
I am new to this so please bare with me.

I downloaded and installed the Electrum wallet and sent an amount of Bitcoins (from another wallet) to this new Electrum wallet. However, within my Electrum wallet is says "Low Fee" and remains unconfirmed for a long time.

I didn't know there were fees when sending Bitcoin, I thought that was the appeal. But anyway, now one asked me for a fee before I sent the coins to myself so what should I do?

Thanks for any advice.

[No.14]

It likes tax in real life but when you send or receive some bitcoin, the speed of transation will be slower or faster based on your fee.
I hope that I think right

[mrbittybunkr]

I think the Bitcoin community should make it much clearer that, unlike domestic bank transfers, it costs money to send Bitcoin. The bigger problem is that, unlike domestic bank transfers, I was not asked to pay a fee or given a chance to so I am left without any coins!

What can I do to release the "Low Fee" signal and get my coins?

[mocacinno]

Could you give me the following information:
- the transaction id
- which wallet you were using to create the transaction (core, electrum, multibit, blockchain.info,...)

[mrbittybunkr]

ID: 8ef53c0af0d9e4994f4ca744ab7241acc5b7ead4eaad5e453036d1ef9b40dbcd
Wallet: Electrum

[mocacinno]

ID: 8ef53c0af0d9e4994f4ca744ab7241acc5b7ead4eaad5e453036d1ef9b40dbcd
Wallet: Electrum

This transaction was confirmed several hours ago, so the fee no longer matters

[isometric]

Could you give me the following information:
- the transaction id
- which wallet you were using to create the transaction (core, electrum, multibit, blockchain.info,...)

Hi Mocacinno,

I'm facing the same issue. I haven't purchased or moved any bitcoins around in over a month or so.
I had put in a transaction fee of 0.0003500, which obviously is way to low at this time.

I have the "Low Fee" which the transaction has been stuck like that since May 20th. I was hoping that it would be returned to my wallet but that has not happened yet.
I have tried the 'Transaction Accelerator' from viaBTC.com but the "Submissions are beyond Limit" at the moment.

Is there anything you can do to help me out here? It would be much appreciated.

ID: 9f12250da96b723e4eac376026d5b51751d7b809a6a5476af59a98a1f739055b
Wallet: Electrum


Thanks Mocacinno.

[mrbittybunkr]

Hi mocacinno, the transaction may have been confirmed but it still is not in my wallet, I still see "Low Fee".

I wish these wallets just gave a plain English explanation, like; "We are halting your Bitcoins, in order to get your coins you need to ..."

It's crazy that we have to ask for help in forums. How will Bitcoin go mainstream if it's is so complicated! I really appreciate you guys help but the wallet designers should have thought about this

Any ideas about this "Low fee"? I am assuming that somebody wants some money from me for something but I have no idea who or how much.

[BitcoinNewsMagazine]

Bitcoin is going mainstream right now and if you are going to use a bitcoin wallet read the manual first. At least you chose the best all around wallet. Now RTFM and enjoy bitcoin!

[isometric]

I spoke to soon.

Looks like I got my BTC back finally.

Lesson learned.

[HCP]

Hi mocacinno, the transaction may have been confirmed but it still is not in my wallet, I still see "Low Fee".
I wish these wallets just gave a plain English explanation, like; "We are halting your Bitcoins, in order to get your coins you need to ..."
It's crazy that we have to ask for help in forums. How will Bitcoin go mainstream if it's is so complicated! I really appreciate you guys help but the wallet designers should have thought about this
Any ideas about this "Low fee"? I am assuming that somebody wants some money from me for something but I have no idea who or how much.

Firstly, what you need to realise is that is isn't the wallet software "halting your coins"... it is the bitcoin network. A lot of new users are quick to blame the wallet software for any issues. In most cases it isn't the software that is lacking, it is the users knowledge of Bitcoin and how it all works. Granted, it can be quite daunting and complex, and there is a lot to learn but in the immortal words of Kenny Rogers - "If you're gonna play the game, boy. You gotta learn to play it right"

Now, Back to your issue... "Low fee" is basically just a warning from Electrum that the transaction has a "Low Fee" and as such, may take a while to confirm. There is another warning that you might see that says "unconfirmed parent" which means that one of the parent transactions for the transaction in question is still unconfirmed, as such, this transaction cannot confirm until the parent transaction does.

If your transaction has confirmed (which it has) but Electrum is still showing it as "low fee" and not a "green tick", it sounds like it isn't updating properly. Do you have a "green light" in the bottom right corner?



If not, and you have a "red light" then your Electrum isn't connected to the network and will not be updating the transactions properly. If you have the "blue arrows" it is still syncing the transaction information.

Click the green/red/blue symbol and you should see something like this:



If the block number is less than 467903, then your transaction won't be updated, because Electrum hasn't sync'd up to the point where your transaction was confirmed.
If the "Getting block headers" part doesn't list at least 1 node, then your Electrum isn't updating properly.

If all of that looks ok, then you may need to restore your wallet with your 12 word seed to get it to sync up properly.

[Abdussamad]

the forum is chock full of threads about unconfirmed transactions. Can you people at least try to search for a solution first? it's very simple. Just use cpfp:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5zchm8/sent_transaction_with_low_fees_in_electrum_can_i/dex2alq/

[locopao]

I have a question regarding electrum & fees, since this is the first time i am using this wallet.

While playing with the fees slider, i get 5 different fees for "within 25 blocks",  starting from 0.0015 up to 0.0027 and of course there is a final option for 0.003 for "within 2 blocks"

Which one should i choose?
Does it really make any difference if i choose 0.0015 or 0.0027 fees? All are for "within 25 blocks"

Let's say that the amount i want to send is 0.0245 in total, so i guess 0.003 for "within 2 blocks" is a little too much

[mocacinno]

I have a question regarding electrum & fees, since this is the first time i am using this wallet.

While playing with the fees slider, i get 5 different fees for "within 25 blocks",  starting from 0.0015 up to 0.0027 and of course there is a final option for 0.003 for "within 2 blocks"

Which one should i choose?
Does it really make any difference if i choose 0.0015 or 0.0027 fees? All are for "within 25 blocks"

Let's say that the amount i want to send is 0.0245 in total, so i guess 0.003 for "within 2 blocks" is a little too much

First, let me start off by telling you that the fee isn't based on the monetary value of the btc that is being sent. The network does not care if you're sending 1000 BTC to a drugdealer, or if you sent 0.00001 BTC to a charity. If both transactions use the same amount of inputs and create the same amount of outputs (amounts, not values), they should have the same fee. The fee is not a percent of the amount of BTC transferred, it's an incentive for the miners to include your transaction into the block they're currently working on.
Since the size of a block is limited to 1Mb, it's normal the miners want to optimize their income by picking the transactions with the biggest fee per byte of transaction data.

At this moment, the size of the unconfirmed transactions that is kept in blockchain.info's nodes mempool is +100 Mb. Blockchain.info is just one (or a couple of) node(s), so there are probably much more unconfirmed transactions floating around on the network. But if you're saying blockchain.info's mempool is an average mempool, there are sufficient unconfirmed transactions floating around in the mempools to fill 100 blocks... So, if nobody would create a new transaction for the next 4 days, and the miners kept creating completely full blocks the whole time, there would still be unconfirmed transactions left after the 4 days have passed...

So, yes, there is a big difference in paying 0.0015 or 0.003. The fee you pay per byte is double when paying 0.003, so you'll have a bigger chance of ending up with a confirmed transaction. If you look at the threads in the technical support subforum, you'll notice dozens of threads opened by users that payed insufficient fees, and now have to bribe miners to add their transactions, try to double spend, RBF, CPFP,... Save yourself the headache and don't cheap out on the fees!

If you want a "second opinion" to see if electrum picked an appropriate fee, you can count the number of inputs used for the transaction you're generating, and count the number of outputs, then punch in these numbers in option 2 of my fee estimator: https://www.mocacinno.com/page/feeestimate

[locopao]

I have a question regarding electrum & fees, since this is the first time i am using this wallet.

While playing with the fees slider, i get 5 different fees for "within 25 blocks",  starting from 0.0015 up to 0.0027 and of course there is a final option for 0.003 for "within 2 blocks"

Which one should i choose?
Does it really make any difference if i choose 0.0015 or 0.0027 fees? All are for "within 25 blocks"

Let's say that the amount i want to send is 0.0245 in total, so i guess 0.003 for "within 2 blocks" is a little too much

First, let me start off by telling you that the fee isn't based on the monetary value of the btc that is being sent. The network does not care if you're sending 1000 BTC to a drugdealer, or if you sent 0.00001 BTC to a charity. If both transactions use the same amount of inputs and create the same amount of outputs (amounts, not values), they should have the same fee. The fee is not a percent off the amount of BTC transferred, it's an incentive for the miners to include your transaction into the block they're currently working on.
Since the size of a block is limited to 1Mb, it's normal the miners want to optimize their income by picking the transactions with the biggest fee per byte of transaction data.

At this moment, the size of the unconfirmed transactions that is kept in blockchain.info's nodes mempool is +100 Mb. Blockchain.info is just one (or a couple of) node(s), so there are probably much more unconfirmed transactions floating around on the network.

So, yes, there is a big difference in paying 0.0015 or 0.003. The fee you pay per byte is double when paying 0.003, so you'll have a bigger chance of ending up with a confirmed transaction. If you look at the threads in the technical support subforum, you'll notice dozens of threads opened by users that payed insufficient fees, and now have to bribe miners to add their transactions, try to double spend, RBF, CPFP,... Save yourself the headache and don't cheap out on the fees!

thanks for your response, i am already aware of the first part of your answer.

I am asking regarding the difference in time of confirmation between the 5 fee options that electrum offers me because i thought electrum automatically calculates the right fee depending the inputs/outputs of the address sending the coins.

EDIT
Ok now i saw the last paragraph of your answer, so the answer is that electrum does not calculate the exact right fees but rather gives an estimation. Is that correct?

And better go with the maximum fee option, just to be on the safe side.

[mrbittybunkr]

the forum is chock full of threads about unconfirmed transactions. Can you people at least try to search for a solution first? it's very simple. Just use cpfp:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5zchm8/sent_transaction_with_low_fees_in_electrum_can_i/dex2alq/

I read that 2 days ago and didn't understand it. I'm not a techy and there's too many abbreviations, hence my comment that plain English should be used. Thanks for the link though.

[mrbittybunkr]

[... Back to your issue... "Low fee" is basically just a warning from Electrum that the transaction has a "Low Fee" ....

If all of that looks ok, then you may need to restore your wallet with your 12 word seed to get it to sync up properly.

Thank you HPC for your clear and detailed reply. I can confirm that the green light is showing so I may have to restore my wallet as you advise. Before I do that, I have an option to click on "Child pays for parent". Would you recommend I do this first? I think I am just nervous of clicking anything in case the Bitcoins disappear, ha, I know that's silly but it's all new.

[HCP]

You really shouldn't need to do a CPFP transaction, as your transaction has already confirmed. Honestly not sure why Electrum is still saying "low fee". Can you right click the transaction, select "details" and just confirm the transaction ID.

Electrum is generally pretty solid, so for it to still say low fee, I'm wondering if it is a different transaction that is "low fee" and now stuck.

Your earlier transaction was: 8ef53c0af0d9e4994f4ca744ab7241acc5b7ead4eaad5e453036d1ef9b40dbcd

please confirm this ID is the same as the one that still says "low fee"

[mrbittybunkr]

You really shouldn't need to do a CPFP transaction, as your transaction has already confirmed. Honestly not sure why Electrum is still saying "low fee". Can you right click the transaction, select "details" and just confirm the transaction ID.

Electrum is generally pretty solid, so for it to still say low fee, I'm wondering if it is a different transaction that is "low fee" and now stuck.

Your earlier transaction was: 8ef53c0af0d9e4994f4ca744ab7241acc5b7ead4eaad5e453036d1ef9b40dbcd

please confirm this ID is the same as the one that still says "low fee"

HCP, I checked the ID and it is different?!

So strange, I even asked the company that I bought the Bitcoins from to tell me the ID which was the one I posted earlier. Anyway, I right clicked and "details" shows the ID as: 18da4880116c8f13a834f452a97f85d3fc5b4ab78ac22d7a917ad4d3ef9af970

Note: I see that the transaction on blockchain.info is for more than $7,000 but I only transferred 1.5 Bitcoins?

[mocacinno]

You really shouldn't need to do a CPFP transaction, as your transaction has already confirmed. Honestly not sure why Electrum is still saying "low fee". Can you right click the transaction, select "details" and just confirm the transaction ID.

Electrum is generally pretty solid, so for it to still say low fee, I'm wondering if it is a different transaction that is "low fee" and now stuck.

Your earlier transaction was: 8ef53c0af0d9e4994f4ca744ab7241acc5b7ead4eaad5e453036d1ef9b40dbcd

please confirm this ID is the same as the one that still says "low fee"

HCP, I checked the ID and it is different?!

So strange, I even asked the company that I bought the Bitcoins from to tell me the ID which was the one I posted earlier. Anyway, I right clicked and "details" shows the ID as: 18da4880116c8f13a834f452a97f85d3fc5b4ab78ac22d7a917ad4d3ef9af970

Note: I see that the transaction on blockchain.info is for more than $7,000 but I only transferred 1.5 Bitcoins?

the fact that you see ~3BTC worth of inputs while you only withdrew 1.5 BTC is normal, it's basically how bitcoin works. The company paying you used a bunch of unspent outputs they controlled as input for a new transaction. This (new, unconfirmed) transaction has 2 outputs: one output to you, one output to either their change address, or to somebody else that needed to get payed.