[Mar 2026]Mempool empty, Consolidate your small inputs @0.11 sat/vbyte

[LoyceV]

A few blocks ago, 1.06 sat/vbyte was enough to get confirmed. Two blocks before that, this happened:

Block 879613 made me say "what the fuck?!".... It caught my attention because of the high transaction fees. Someone went through a lot of trouble to create this:

[BlackHatCoiner]

Someone went through a lot of trouble to create this

It's a developer from MARA pool. I also noticed this in testnet4: https://mempool.space/testnet4/block/00000000000000050d8f48eeb6711204b7309ddee6c61cf23dd6e25c169ed551. I don't understand the sketch in this case, though.

[apogio]

It's actually been posted here Loyce. You can go there for more info or discussion (if anything can be discussed about it).

[BlackHatCoiner]

New icon block just dropped, from SECPOOL this time: https://mempool.space/block/00000000000000000001c3fbc76a7efe7a320a8236ea6250bc15e4f7a67e727d. Some miners have way too much money to spend on painting blocks for mempool.space. I hope this does not turn into another shitcoin like "rare sats", "backed" by these icons.

What does 'BTCAI' mean, though?



Costed 0.063 BTC in unclaimed transaction fees.

[LoyceV]

New icon block just dropped

How do they do this? Did mempool.space cooperate on this by changing their code? I don't see how they can plan their transactions in such a way to creates patterns: in any other block the lowest fees are sorted on the left, the highest fees on the right.

Some miners have way too much money to spend on painting blocks for mempool.space.

I'd argue it's really cheap to do! They still get the block reward, they get the fees they paid for their own transactions, and all they miss out on is about 0.03 to 0.08 BTC on fees from real transactions. That's only 1 or 2% of the block reward.

What does 'BTCAI' mean, though?

I'll read it as Bitcoin AL

Costed 0.063 BTC in unclaimed transaction fees.

Good point, mempool's "expected block" gives a better estimate. But it confirms what I said: that's only 2% of the block reward.

[hosemary]

How do they do this? Did mempool.space cooperate on this by changing their code? I don't see how they can plan their transactions in such a way to creates patterns: in any other block the lowest fees are sorted on the left, the highest fees on the right.

Mempool.space always sort the transactions by their index. They always put the transaction number 0 (coinbase) at the bottom left corner. Then, they put the transaction number 1 at the right side of it and so on.

Miners usually sort the transactions by their fee rate and that's why you usually see a same pattern in mempool.space. For example, miners usually assign the index of 1 to the transaction with the highest fee rate.
Secpool assigned the indexes to the transactions in a different way and designed that image.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Good point, mempool's "expected block" gives a better estimate. But it confirms what I said: that's only 2% of the block reward.

I'd rather not give even 0.2% of my reward to SECPOOL's reputation on painting blocks, if I was a miner. 

Completely unprofessional, unless the miners were alerted, but irrational either way.

[LoyceV]

I'd rather not give even 0.2% of my reward to SECPOOL's reputation on painting blocks, if I was a miner. 
Completely unprofessional, unless the miners were alerted, but irrational either way.

Now that you mention it: What makes you think the miners in that pool lost on this? It looks like the miners have 0.499 BTC to distribute, instead of 0.063 BTC. If that's correct, SECPOOL indeed paid 0.499 BTC, and not just the 0.063 BTC they missed.

It's a form of advertising, and considering I've seen it a few times already, it worked.

[BlackHatCoiner]

It looks like the miners have 0.499 BTC to distribute

It looks like the mining pool has 0.499 BTC to distribute.

[LoyceV]

It's Friday, and 1.12 sat/vbyte is enough to get confirmed. That's promising for the weekend
There are many blocks lining up with spam-conslidatations, but it can't get much lower anyway. If you have anything to consolidate, now's the time

[Don Pedro Dinero]

People get so nervous don't they? Over the weekend transactions of at most 2 sats/vByte have been confirming quickly but there have been two blocks recently that have taken a long time to confirm, I think it was 880875 and 880876, the first taking almost an hour and the second half an hour. I was in a bit of a hurry to send a transaction and did so at 5 sats/vByte but while I was waiting I saw one at 300. I know that sometimes some wallets have suggested rates that overpay, and also maybe people prefer to overpay in case transactions keep accumulating, but that much?

Maybe it's not the first time this topic has come up in the thread but I'm not going to search through all 62 pages.

[LoyceV]

I was in a bit of a hurry to send a transaction and did so at 5 sats/vByte but while I was waiting I saw one at 300. I know that sometimes some wallets have suggested rates that overpay, and also maybe people prefer to overpay in case transactions keep accumulating, but that much?

It's this transaction, and there are more. But looking at the block, the majority pays close to the minimum to be included.
Some people or exchanges just don't seem to care, many others probably don't understand and trust their wallet's fee estimation. Especially when fees go up high, wallets are trying to outbid each other.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

It's this transaction, and there are more. But looking at the block, the majority pays close to the minimum to be included.

Having a bitcoin at that address I guess the guy is loaded and doesn't mind overpaying but it's still 5% when he could have paid a lot less.

But there is something else that strikes me. How come the change address is the same as the one that sends? I believe that all the wallets I have had, of various types, always create a new address for change.

[BlackHatCoiner]

But there is something else that strikes me. How come the change address is the same as the one that sends? I believe that all the wallets I have had, of various types, always create a new address for change.

Not if you use Electrum, and create a wallet with only one address imported. Alternatively, he could just spend all the value of the UTXO into two outputs, instead of letting the software create the change output automatically.

[LoyceV]

Having a bitcoin at that address I guess the guy is loaded and doesn't mind overpaying but it's still 5% when he could have paid a lot less.

I only now checked 3AWDcijmqdgb4Hxpra3p2k8nfm76UFCDed: it's been paying around 300-350 sat/vbyte for at least a year (I didn't check back further). It has 21,446 transactions, so it's probably an exchange. They even have multiple transactions confirmed in the same block, instead of using "send to many". Clearly, they don't care about spending wasting a lot of money on transaction fees.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

I only now checked 3AWDcijmqdgb4Hxpra3p2k8nfm76UFCDed: it's been paying around 300-350 sat/vbyte for at least a year (I didn't check back further). It has 21,446 transactions, so it's probably an exchange. They even have multiple transactions confirmed in the same block, instead of using "send to many". Clearly, they don't care about spending wasting a lot of money on transaction fees.

I don't see the point of it. Any good business is about getting the costs right. I can understand that an exchange can be in a hurry to get some transactions confirmed and may overpay in some cases to avoid them getting stuck. But firstly, as far as I know, these fees are far below what the customer is charged, and secondly, paying so much more than the right fees seems to be the job of an amateur rather than a business.

[LoyceV]

I don't see the point of it. ~ paying so much more than the right fees seems to be the job of an amateur rather than a business.

Large exchanges have been heavily overpaying for years. I don't see the point either, so my assumption is they must earn so much money they simply don't care about millions of dollars.

[NeuroticFish]

I don't see the point of it. ~ paying so much more than the right fees seems to be the job of an amateur rather than a business.

Large exchanges have been heavily overpaying for years. I don't see the point either, so my assumption is they must earn so much money they simply don't care about millions of dollars.

Actually they want to waste that money for fees because
* they want the withdrawal fees stay high, so people are incentivized to keep their coins on the platform
* they don't want the people say they steal that money, so they use it for paying the "oh so expensive" transaction fees

[LoyceV]

Actually they want to waste that money for fees

This sounds ridiculous, so I'm not even surprised if it's true

[bitmover]

It's Friday, and 1.12 sat/vbyte is enough to get confirmed. That's promising for the weekend
There are many blocks lining up with spam-conslidatations, but it can't get much lower anyway. If you have anything to consolidate, now's the time

By mistake I send a transaction for 1 sat v/b in coinomi ( i wanted to send 1.1 but by mistake I sent 1 lol).

Now it is stuck! I will just wait a few days until it drops (I hope!!)

Luckily, it was a very small input (30 usd) just to try an UTXO from mixer in a CEX. Anyway, other UTXO from the same addresses worked, and I made a small consolidation of about 10 inputs.