[Jul 2025]Mempool empty, Consolidate your small inputs @0.10 sat/vbyte (???)!

[LoyceV]

Bump! Blocks aren't full

[LoyceV]

Mempool.space is fun: out of the last 10 blocks, only 2 were full. But the last block was 32 minutes ago, the block before that 55 minutes. So there are a few blocks worth of transactions waiting, and I checked some of the transactions with the highest fees:
This one sent 455 BTC from a Legacy address with a 0.001 BTC fee. That's 526 sat/vbyte.
This one had a few inputs and outputs, and a "Runestone" OP_RETURN. It paid 279 sat/vbyte after more RBF-increases than mempool.space can show:

They must have an automated system to increase the fee, and it's not the first time I'm wondering why they're burning money at such a rate. They're literally increasing the fee every few seconds, and they're doing that on many similar transactions.
This small consolidation stood out because it paid exactly 0.001 BTC fee, which brought it to 153 sat/vbyte. It could have made the same block with just 3 sat/vbyte.

[kanftka]

Mempool.space is fun: out of the last 10 blocks, only 2 were full. But the last block was 32 minutes ago, the block before that 55 minutes. So there are a few blocks worth of transactions waiting, and I checked some of the transactions with the highest fees:
This one sent 455 BTC from a Legacy address with a 0.001 BTC fee. That's 526 sat/vbyte.
This one had a few inputs and outputs, and a "Runestone" OP_RETURN. It paid 279 sat/vbyte after more RBF-increases than mempool.space can show:

They must have an automated system to increase the fee, and it's not the first time I'm wondering why they're burning money at such a rate. They're literally increasing the fee every few seconds, and they're doing that on many similar transactions.
This small consolidation stood out because it paid exactly 0.001 BTC fee, which brought it to 153 sat/vbyte. It could have made the same block with just 3 sat/vbyte.

Yeah, Makes no sense why they’re throwing that much in fees when the blocks aren’t even full. Could’ve confirmed with a fraction of that. Looks like some auto fee bumping system that just keeps pushing the fee without checking the actual mempool. Either bad config or they just don’t care about burning sats. Seen it a few times now, still don’t get the logic behind it.

[Medusah]

I feel like a large portion of the mining revenue is due to bad software. 

[LoyceV]

I feel like a large portion of the mining revenue is due to bad software.

Fees are currently less than 1% of the block reward, so I wouldn't call it a large portion. But it has been much larger in the past, and that included fees paid by large exchanges. I still don't get why they don't care about fixing their fee estimate if it costs them millions upon millions.

[Cricktor]

Some people are just nuts and/or are addicted to burning fees for nothing. I just saw this transaction 586a38b62b884375d95a981593a36441429c0650c4b546adb53f6b000d4d0db7 (was unconfirmed in mempool when I started writing but got confirmed while I still wasn't finished) where some entity just burned 10k+ $$$ for a fee rate of 151 sat/vB for a large consolidation transaction.

9,675,900 sats ($10,375) fee, overpaid 50x for a target output of 1BTC consolidating 948ish inputs, that doesn't make any sense to me even when the block took almost 15min to be mined; this insanely high fee was the initial fee and the transaction spent about 14min in mempool to wait for being confirmed in the next block. Back to: some people are just nuts.

I'm sure the miners don't mind such stupidity...

[LoyceV]

9,675,900 sats ($10,375) fee, overpaid 50x for a target output of 1BTC consolidating 948ish inputs

It looks like he really wanted a nice round output number
Or maybe it was a manually created transaction: set output amount, and forget that everything else is added to the transaction fee.

[Cricktor]

It looks like he really wanted a nice round output number

Well, just add a change output to take the excess amount and they still have the nice "round" 1.00000000BTC output. No need to waste such an amount of sats for nothing.

Or maybe it was a manually created transaction: set output amount, and forget that everything else is added to the transaction fee.

Could be a plausible explanation. Maybe hastily assembled the transaction and forgot to add the change? Fat fingers tremor? Whatever... it's just crazy to waste around 10% of moved coins in fees and especially when it's not just moved "peanuts" amount.

I always preview a transaction, double check outputs, transaction fee before I sign it and usually do another round of checks before I broadcast the signed transaction, especially for larger amounts.

[LoyceV]

1.00 sat/vbyte is still possible in July

[LoyceV]

1.00 sat/vbyte is still possible in July

Despite new ATHs, transaction fees are still low

[Medusah]

0.1 sat/vb is the new 1 sat/vb!

https://mempool.space/

[LoyceV]

0.1 sat/vb is the new 1 sat/vb!

Mempool.space may show it, but if miners haven't lowered the minimum, it won't get confirmed.

[Medusah]

0.1 sat/vb is the new 1 sat/vb!

Mempool.space may can it, but if miners haven't lowered the minimum, it won't get confirmed.

I read on X that mining pool Luxor has configured to mine them, but I can't find the post. 

[LoyceV]

I read on X that mining pool Luxor has configured to mine them

They found 40 blocks in the last week. I checked a few blocks, they include many 0.35 and 0.63 sat/vbyte transactions.

Any idea how to broadcast to Luxor pool? If this works, I'd say we have a winner for the purpose of this topic! Title updated (to add some clickbait).

[Medusah]

Any idea how to broadcast to Luxor pool? If this works, I'd say we have a winner for the purpose of this topic! Title updated (to add some clickbait).

Try using broadcast:  https://mempool.space/tx/push

[LoyceV]

Try using broadcast:  https://mempool.space/tx/push

So you're saying mempool.space will relay it to Luxor pool? That kinda makes sense
Next problem: how to create such a transaction in Electrum? It's been years since I had zero-fee transactions, so I'd like to try the lowest possible fee

[philipma1957]

Try using broadcast:  https://mempool.space/tx/push

So you're saying mempool.space will relay it to Luxor pool? That kinda makes sense
Next problem: how to create such a transaction in Electrum? It's been years since I had zero-fee transactions, so I'd like to try the lowest possible fee

I am away from my trezor but I am willing to see if it's advanced fee feature allows for  0.9 to 0.8 or lower.

It certainly would be easy if it does.

I know

 1.01
1.02
1.03
1.04
1.05

And on up work as I tested them.

[LoyceV]

I am away from my trezor but I am willing to see if it's advanced fee feature allows for  0.9 to 0.8 or lower.

Electrum shows this:

This transaction requires a higher fee, or it will not be propagated by your current server. Try to raise your transaction fee, or use a server with a lower relay fee.

I can't even Preview the transaction, so I can't copy it.

I think this would be ideal for consolidations: just set a low fee, and if it takes too long, broadcast a normal transaction to other nodes that ignored your low-fee transaction.

Dust spammers are already lining up to fill many blocks with transactions like this 0.36 sat/vbyte transaction with 1462 inputs (294 sat each). That address has 209750 dust inputs, and 27987 waiting for consolidation.

I'm curious to see if other pools will follow Luxor's example. Where other pools would now mine an empty block, Luxor collects 0.005 BTC in transaction fees. That's an easy $600 for blocks for a few blocks per week.

[Medusah]

It's quite painful to create transaction paying less than 1 sat/vb, but I'm sure developers will start upgrading their clients.  BlueWallet says it's coming on the next release: https://x.com/bluewalletio/status/1945105660594544780.

MARA pool has also joined the party: https://mempool.space/block/00000000000000000000767b42452c3e2b6d13bba006f71a19011b77d451ba1f.

A non-empty mempool is undeniably a step forward.

[LoyceV]

It's quite painful to create transaction paying less than 1 sat/vb

Coinb.in could work, but chances are someone is going to overpay a lot in transaction fees if they're not very careful.

MARA pool has also joined the party

I like it!
From a pool's perspective, I think they have to choose between missing out on transactions because they reject the fee, or missing out on higher fees if users start switching to lower fees. Either way, more competition is a good thing.