ViaBTC accelerator not working?

[ionicle]

For some reason ViaBTC's accelerator has not been working since I tried it yesterday - tried numerous times to accelerate my transaction, straight on the hour, in the very first second of a new hour - Submissions are beyond limit. Tried 10 more times - same bullshit.

I have used their service lots of times before, and there was never an issue as long as I did it straight in the first few seconds of a new hour.

What the fuck? Has anyone had any success using their service in the past day?

On a related note - can anyone accelerate my transaction, please? The TX ID is https://blockchain.info/tx/2727e9d1517770c0e6a616cbff5544251559b10924b329a14a90a1f2fac61ed0

[LoyceV]

Many people use it, so the 100 transactions per hour fill up very quickly.

You should avoid small transactions, your 0.00048874 BTC output for instance is smaller than the fee required to use it again. Basically, it's worthless dust at the moment.

[ionicle]

That's a transaction a customer sent to me - it wasn't me that sent it.

I know the 100-per-hour transaction limit of ViaBTC fills up very quickly - I have tried like 10 times already, ALWAYS on the hour, ALWAYS in the very first second of a new hour ( I have made sure my clock is synced properly ) and I literally watch the clock hit the 12 mark and press "Accelerate" - always getting the "Submissions are beyond limit" bullshit.

Never had that happen before, and I've used them numerous times. Yes, if I am like 5 seconds late, it's already filled, but that's normal, I guess.

[DannyHamilton]

What the fuck? Has anyone had any success using their service in the past day?

I have.

tried numerous times to accelerate my transaction, straight on the hour, in the very first second of a new hour - Submissions are beyond limit. Tried 10 more times - same bullshit.

I have used their service lots of times before, and there was never an issue as long as I did it straight in the first few seconds of a new hour.

It is possible that your system clock and their system clock are not set exactly the same.  So, by the time you think it is "straight on the hour", their system might have already been accepting transactions for many seconds.

I have made sure my clock is synced properly

How do you know that your clock is synced to their clock?

When I'm trying to help someone out and accelerate their transaction for them, I typically start trying to use viaBTC about 3 or 4 minute before the hour. Then I repeated try over and over until it either succeeds or until it is 3 or 4 minutes after the hour.  If I miss the window of opportunity (because I'm too slow entering the captcha), then I try again the next hour.  I've never had it take more than 3 hours of trying before being successful.

[ionicle]

Yeah, I've thought about that.

But it was never a problem before - so I assumed our clocks are synchronised in the same manner.

I will try your approach in about half an hour - the captcha is a bugger and I hope it doesn't trip me up, especially if it displays characters that are tough to recognize and quickly type up...

I don't get why this backlog of unconfirmed transactions keeps growing and growing - it's at almost 185k already. Seriously, WTF?

When is this junk with a huge unconfirmed backlog gonna be permanently fixed - lightning network and whatnot? This is getting ridiculous, geez...

[DannyHamilton]

I will try your approach in about half an hour

Send me the txid, and I'll try at the top of this hour as well.  That will double your chances of success.

[ionicle]

Appreciate it - TX ID is 2727e9d1517770c0e6a616cbff5544251559b10924b329a14a90a1f2fac61ed0

[DannyHamilton]

I tried.  Was unsuccessful.  Hopefully you had more success.

Note that if you are a viaBTC customer, you get the ability to accelerate transactions a number of times with no limit on the number of accelerations per hour.  It's pretty expensive, so it generally isn't a worthwhile solution unless the transaction you are trying to accelerate is a LOT of money.

I think they give you 5 accelerations for every "mining contract" you buy directly from them on their "cloud mining" service.  1 BTC contract currently costs about 0.1103 BTC, so the 5 accelerations would cost you about 0.02206 BTC each.  In theory, over time, that cloud mining contract would earn you back a portion of the 0.1103 BTC that you spent, so the effective cost would be a bit less.

I tend to assume that most cloud mining is just a scam, so I would never purchase a viaBTC contract with the intention to profit from cloud mining, but I have purchased a contract from them in the past when the contracts were a bit cheaper and I really needed to accelerate a transaction.  Back then the contract only cost 0.097, and I have since "earned" back 0.055 BTC from "cloud mining".  So the effective cost of the 5 accelerations turned out to be 0.0084 BTC each.

[Lucius]

That's a transaction a customer sent to me - it wasn't me that sent it.

I know the 100-per-hour transaction limit of ViaBTC fills up very quickly - I have tried like 10 times already, ALWAYS on the hour, ALWAYS in the very first second of a new hour ( I have made sure my clock is synced properly ) and I literally watch the clock hit the 12 mark and press "Accelerate" - always getting the "Submissions are beyond limit" bullshit.

Never had that happen before, and I've used them numerous times. Yes, if I am like 5 seconds late, it's already filled, but that's normal, I guess.

I also try yesterday few times and it is not working no matter how accurate I try to be in submiting transaction.So maybe they temporarily shut down free accelerator or someone found the way to take advantage of all the possible accelerations available every hour,maybe with some script or something like that.

Considering how big problems users have with high fees and stucked transaction,for some users such service become a lucrative business.

[ionicle]

They cannot automate that with a script - that's what the captcha's for.

Also tried on the hour and no luck again.

[ionicle]

I just decided to check out the transaction on various block explorers besides Blockchain.info, and it doesn't show up anywhere else. What. The. Actual. Fuck?!

The fee isn't that low, geez, it's 60 fuckin sat/b.... Why isn't it showing anywhere....

TX id: 2727e9d1517770c0e6a616cbff5544251559b10924b329a14a90a1f2fac61ed0

[DannyHamilton]

They cannot automate that with a script - that's what the captcha's for.

Character recognition has advanced to a level where automated services can have a significant success rate.

Also tried on the hour and no luck again.

Sorry to hear that.  Hope you get through soon.

There is a huge backlog of unconfirmed transactions right now. I suspect that there are probably more than 100 people that are all trying at the exact same time.  Under these circumstances I'm not sure which method will be better (your method of clicking the "submit" button exactly at the top of the hour according to your own clock, or my method of repeatedly trying from a few minutes before until a few minutes after the hour). If there are 1000 people all trying at exactly the moment when viaBTC resets, then each user will only succeed an average of one out of every ten times that they try.  If there are 10,000 people all trying at exactly the moment when viaBTC resets, then each user will only succeed an average of one out of every hundred times that they try.

On the other hand, the more times people fail the more likely they are to give up trying, which may increase your chances as long as you stick to it.

Good luck.

[DannyHamilton]

I just decided to check out the transaction on various block explorers besides Blockchain.info, and it doesn't show up anywhere else. What. The. Actual. Fuck?!

The fee isn't that low, geez, it's 60 fuckin sat/b.... Why isn't it showing anywhere....

TX id: 2727e9d1517770c0e6a616cbff5544251559b10924b329a14a90a1f2fac61ed0

Not sure.  However, you can push the transaction directly to viaBTC to make sure they have it in their mempool.  If they don't have it, and you manage to time an acceleration correctly you'll get an error about it being an unrecognized transaction ID. It will be VERY frustrating to finally get the timing just right, and have it fail anyway.

You can push the raw transaction to their mempool here:
https://pool.viabtc.com/tools/BTC/broadcast/

[DannyHamilton]

Can someone help me with this transaction?

ID: 9a2a0b1ba7949447acfba20829b1eda303828f172b1bbbf3c11101f9b7670b61


Stuck for 6 days

Please don't hijack someone else's thread. Your post has been reported to a moderator.

[ionicle]

I just decided to check out the transaction on various block explorers besides Blockchain.info, and it doesn't show up anywhere else. What. The. Actual. Fuck?!

The fee isn't that low, geez, it's 60 fuckin sat/b.... Why isn't it showing anywhere....

TX id: 2727e9d1517770c0e6a616cbff5544251559b10924b329a14a90a1f2fac61ed0

Not sure.  However, you can push the transaction directly to viaBTC to make sure they have it in their mempool.  If they don't have it, and you manage to time an acceleration correctly you'll get an error about it being an unrecognized transaction ID. It will be VERY frustrating to finally get the timing just right, and have it fail anyway.

You can push the raw transaction to their mempool here:
https://pool.viabtc.com/tools/BTC/broadcast/

Appreciate the continued help, Danny - how can I push a raw transaction to their mempool, that was apparently sent via the Blockchain web wallet?

[DannyHamilton]

Appreciate the continued help, Danny - how can I push a raw transaction to their mempool, that was apparently sent via the Blockchain web wallet?

You can get the raw hex transaction from blockchain.info with this link:
https://blockchain.info/rawtx/9a2a0b1ba7949447acfba20829b1eda303828f172b1bbbf3c11101f9b7670b61?format=hex

In case you ever need to find the raw transaction at blockchain.info yourself...

Just change the usual /tx/  in the URL to /rawtx/  and then add ?format=hex to the end of the URL.

You can copy the transaction from there, and then paste it into the text entry box at the viaBTC link I provided.

[ionicle]

Awesome, been outside and just got back home - already submitted the raw transaction and will keep trying to push it to accelerate tonight.

Thank you so much!

[HCP]

The fee isn't that low, geez, it's 60 fuckin sat/b.... Why isn't it showing anywhere....

When the "recommended" fees are over 500 sats/byte... "60 fuckin sat/b" may as well be zero sats/byte

Especially with 100,000+ unconfirmed transactions floating about in the mempool...

Looking at https://btc.com/stats/unconfirmed-tx we can see that currently there is at least 72 megs or roughly 72 blocks worth of transactions that all pay higher than your 60 sats/byte.

At an average of 10 minutes per block, it would theoretically take 12 hours for all those transactions to be confirmed before yours... But only if no more transactions were added. Each transaction that gets added from now that has a higher fee, is effectively shunting your transaction further down the queue... And delaying confirmation of your transaction.

I'm personally wondering when the point will arrive that you'll get faster confirmations by simply mining your own block with a GPU #onlyHalfJoking

[Nthused]

The fee isn't that low, geez, it's 60 fuckin sat/b.... Why isn't it showing anywhere....

When the "recommended" fees are over 500 sats/byte... "60 fuckin sat/b" may as well be zero sats/byte

Especially with 100,000+ unconfirmed transactions floating about in the mempool...

Looking at https://btc.com/stats/unconfirmed-tx we can see that currently there is at least 72 megs or roughly 72 blocks worth of transactions that all pay higher than your 60 sats/byte.

At an average of 10 minutes per block, it would theoretically take 12 hours for all those transactions to be confirmed before yours... But only if no more transactions were added. Each transaction that gets added from now that has a higher fee, is effectively shunting your transaction further down the queue... And delaying confirmation of your transaction.

I'm personally wondering when the point will arrive that you'll get faster confirmations by simply mining your own block with a GPU #onlyHalfJoking

I've noticed some strange activity in the Bitcoin Mempool, seems like there is an ongoing Tx spam attack thus delaying normal users deposits/withdrawals.

I put my money on Bitmain and the BitcoinCash guys taking aim at bad boy Bitcoin.

[teyasio]

After watching tone vays on the mem pool.  I seriously doubt this is normal.  This is all cause of bitcoin cash imo.

Anyway my transaction has been stuck for a day.  I'm going to try again, but maybe some one can help me out.
ccac420f315f3bc96c386dbfeb1e76c8c60ccc302d0b838814dd0fe748fbd9f0

Thank you