unconfirmed transactions very stressed.

[markgg]

Hi,

I recently bought a ledger and set up a new google chrome wallet I choose segwit when I created it.
As a test I tried moving a small amount of bit coin from my old electrum wallet (version 2.6.3) to my new wallet.
This transaction has been unconfirmed for 5 days.

The transaction was for 0.011 BTC
The link to block explorer shows the transaction as unconfirmed but the fees as 0.060475 BTC

Which makes no sense. The actual amount that left my electrum wallet is showing as 0.011112 BTC

The funds have appeared in my ledger wallet but have been showing as unconfirmed for 5 days.

Then yesterday. I did a much larger transaction to a third party company I have been dealing with.
This transaction is also unconfirmed but only for a few hours so far.
In the case of the second transaction the fees and the amount that left my wallet are the same.
But Im really really stressed now.

Questions.....

1) If someone got my electrum wallet seed restored my wallet and spent the coins what would it look like ?
     Could this be whats happened?

2) Could sending the coins to my new ledger wallet with the segwit capabilites have caused this ?

3) What do I do now ?. If I just wait and do nothing will the transactions eventually be returned to my electrum wallet ?

Thanks...

[LoyceV]

The transaction was for 0.011 BTC
The link to block explorer shows the transaction as unconfirmed but the fees as 0.060475 BTC

Can you show the txid? Is it possible the transaction is very large?

1) If someone got my electrum wallet seed restored my wallet and spent the coins what would it look like ?
     Could this be whats happened?

I doubt that is what happened, if someone gets your seed, he'll just empty your wallet.

2) Could sending the coins to my new ledger wallet with the segwit capabilites have caused this ?

No.

3) What do I do now ?. If I just wait and do nothing will the transactions eventually be returned to my electrum wallet ?

According to pooya87, Electrum nodes stop broadcasting transactions after 2 weeks. After that it can take a few days to drop from mempool.

[Abdussamad]

2.6.4 is a very old version of electrum and it is likely setting a fee that is too low for your transaction. Anyway please try these steps to fix your problem:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1916963.msg19015496#msg19015496

[markgg]

Thanks for responding ...

Here are my unconfirmed transactions.

Transaction id :

a181de55bcc613170f3c99be8f0648dd55febf911f5adc2ac11e8697dbd1efce

for 0.011 Bitcoin

And

e97dd729dd979e87630fa4a1d65692f1c5ac944d208be49ea8ae6deb74f331b0

for 0.30 Bitcoin

And advice is much appreciated.

Sounds like my best plan is to wait 3 weeks let them return to my wallet, upgrade electrum to the latest
and try again. Does that sound fair ?

[HCP]

Both your transactions are over 10 sats/byte... so you could attempt to use the ViaBTC Transaction accelerator to push them through. In the meantime, an upgrade to the latest version of Electrum is recommended.

EDIT: a181de55bcc613170f3c99be8f0648dd55febf911f5adc2ac11e8697dbd1efce has been accelerated... should get a confirmation in the next hour or 3 depending on when ViaBTC mine their next block.

EDi2: and e97dd729dd979e87630fa4a1d65692f1c5ac944d208be49ea8ae6deb74f331b0 was accelerated with ViaBTC as well... and this morning I see ViaBTC actually mined both together in the same block!

You're welcome

[CutterEsposito]

I hvae an old wallet that I found the private key for. Yes, you can laugh. It was one of those: I'll put it somewhere safe. And forgot where that was. It has a lot of dust with which I would've dealt earlier when fees were lower, but need to sweep it now. Needless to say, the fees are UGLY now (like $2,000 fee on $3,000 worth). So I put it out there with Electrum to lowball it and then put in a CPFP. Neither have transacted. In fact, when I look at various transaction explorers, it doens't even show up on a lot of them. Also, ViaBTC's Accelerator doesn't seem to be up and running (and ConfirmTX is one of those places that doesn't recognize the txnID).

Original transaction: https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/tx/9e341182ed1942b8d1023645f37a693bd37f712befd590d6201eac9246a11aba
Same transaction example not-found: https://tradeblock.com/bitcoin/tx/9e341182ed1942b8d1023645f37a693bd37f712befd590d6201eac9246a11aba

CPFP transaction: https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/tx/bd920dff3bfcf5a3f12512f3918a6055192e2f1a1e5b62742edf738ba6b31ddf

Questions:
* Can I just wait for those to expire (how long will this take?) And just lowball the fee even further (10 sats/B)? Then do another CPFP?
* Why is my txnID unrecognized in a lot of places? Is this why it's not getting mined? No exposure?
* What's up with ViaBTC's Accelerator? Down temporarily or for the count?

Thanks!

[LoyceV]

I hvae an old wallet that I found the private key for. Yes, you can laugh. It was one of those: I'll put it somewhere safe. And forgot where that was. It has a lot of dust with which I would've dealt earlier when fees were lower, but need to sweep it now. Needless to say, the fees are UGLY now (like $2,000 fee on $3,000 worth).

It's an old wallet, so you should be in no rush to get to it now. My advice: just wait!
Check the recommended fees once in a while, and once it says 40 satoshi/byte is enough, you can make your transaction. You'll can probably do it on a quiet Sunday, although not all Sundays guarantee low fees.

[CutterEsposito]

Fair. I guess I'm more worried that fees keep moving in the wrong direction.

Will those transactions that are out there expire? how long does that take?

Thanks!

[HCP]

* What's up with ViaBTC's Accelerator? Down temporarily or for the count?

Are you using the OLD url? They re-organised the site... try here: https://pool.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/

NOTE: if it says your transaction doesn't exist, you can try submitting your transaction using their "Transaction Broadcast" link on that page...

[CutterEsposito]

Blessed be you forever and may the bitcoins rain down on you from the skies. Thank you!!

[CutterEsposito]

Actually, how do you use the Transaction Broadcast feature? It wants a "Raw Transaction" and I"m not sure what to supply there. Looks like it's the json for the transaction, but I'm not sure how to get that. I'm using Electrum.

Thanks again!

[CutterEsposito]

I *think* I found it, but it says too long when I try to broadcast it: https://api.blockcypher.com/v1/btc/main/txs/9e341182ed1942b8d1023645f37a693bd37f712befd590d6201eac9246a11aba?limit=50&includeHex=true

[HCP]

You just want the hex part... Excluding the " characters.... But your transaction is farking HUGE nearly 60,000 bytes!!?!

You might struggle getting any of the transaction broadcast services to accept it...

[CutterEsposito]

Yeah. I did that. I figured it was the size. The broadcast services that took it are the ones that I'm 99.9% sure already had it. Maybe this is why it's not confirming? Can I wait for it to time out of the mempool and then work it as 2 separate/smaller (or more) transactions then combine those? Given the size, the fee is high, so I was trying a lowball fee with a Child Pays For Payment strategy. Would love some advice on sweeping up this dust into a single output at the lowest fee possible. I can be patient with it...no emergency.

Thanks again.

[HCP]

A CPFP strategy will most likely NOT help you here. CPFP requires that you create a 2nd transaction that pays the "proper" fees for BOTH itself AND the previous transaction! In effect, you're actually paying more because you have to pay for the 2nd transaction as well!

For instance:

Transaction 1 = 60,000 bytes @ 5 sats/byte = 300,000 sats <-- Stuck due to low fee
Transaction 2 = 226 bytes... ?fee rate?

CPFP fee = (Total Size of Both Transactions * Proper Fee rate ) - amount already paid

lets say a "proper" fee is 400 sats/byte... so you need to pay: ((60,000 + 226) * 400) - 300,000) = 24,090,400 - 300,000 = 23,790,400 sats = 0.237904 BTC

A miner would now see your second transaction offering a MASSIVE fee rate of 105,267 sats/byte... yes, 105K sats/byte... and be like "I WANT IT!!!?!"... but to get it, they also have to include your unconfirmed transaction...

So, intentionally setting up a transaction that requires CPFP is likely to cost you more than just paying the proper fee in the first place.


At this stage, I'd say your best course of action was to wait for the transaction to fully drop (you may need to prevent your wallet attempting to rebroadcast)... after it has dropped, redo the transaction in smaller "chunks"... use a fee of AT LEAST 11 sats/byte (to account for rounding issues)... and then accelerate each one using ViaBTC... it'll take a while, (you have a metric shitton of dust by the looks of it ) but you should get there in the end.

I'd recommend maybe no more than 20 inputs per transaction, just to keep the size down and make it less likely for that to cause issues... then after all those transactions are confirmed (will probably be around 30-40 transactions in total), you can then do the same thing with all your new UTXOs...

granted, it isn't the "cheapest" solution in terms of total fee or time required, but you should end up paying no more than maybe a total combined fee of around 15 sat/byte... still going to be around 0.009 total fees... but that's unavoidable really.

In future, you should probably try combining them a bit more regularly... especially if you spot a time of either low total transactions and/or low fees... your wallet is like a car, proper care and maintenance will help prevent issues

or just don't accept/collect dust

[CutterEsposito]

Thanks so much This is best explanation I've heard to date anywhere. Question: how long does it take to fall off the mempool? And does Electrum try to resend the transaction?

Thanks again!!

[HCP]

Thanks so much This is best explanation I've heard to date anywhere. Question: how long does it take to fall off the mempool? And does Electrum try to resend the transaction?

It can take anywhere from 72 hours to 14 days... the newer versions of Bitcoin Core (kind of the "default" Node software) are setup to have a max mempool time of 14 days... earlier versions were 72 hours... but node owners can set this value to whatever they want.

It's possible that Electrum does rebroadcast... I honestly don't know for sure... I'm not sure if there is a way to stop it (ie. no "walletbroadcast=0" type option that I know of like Bitcoin Core has)... I can't recall if Electrum has a "cancel" transaction option if you right click on it

[CutterEsposito]

I'll nuke the wallet and restore it in 14 days. Thanks.

[CutterEsposito]

Not having touched the wallet, I am still monitoring the transaction. I did notice that despite the 12/9 date, it's still out there. So....is it longer than 14 days? Or am I actually just screwed somehow?

https://blockchain.info/tx/f829817ed1f3e7dbaa6a32761aa72a96fe79cfdddd37b97a888d67e4ac703239

Thanks!

[Abdussamad]

Here read this: https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/3579#issuecomment-353487856