Unconfirmed Transaction for almost 16 hours!

[shooliganAF9]

I'm a bit of a noob so bear with me please but have sent 0.3 via Wallet app on Android (exactly as I always do) but that has been sitting on unconfirmed for over 16 hours. 

I've been working with bitcoin for about a year and have never seen this before - I'm hoping it's just that the blockchain is frozen somehow and it'll either confirm or bounce back?  Is there any risk of me 'losing' that bitcoin?

Thanks in advance!

[1714949148]

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[jackg]

No there's no chance of you're funds being lost and if they were sent from your own wallet and not an exchange they'll be easy to resend if they do bounce...

If you don't need them urgently, I'd suggest waiting it out, if you do therell be cpfp or rbf you cna use but it'd be helpful to know if there's a bump fee option first or how it looks in the wallet?

[shooliganAF9]

Thank you Jack and that makes me feel a lot better.  It's not urgent other than would like to capitalise on higher rate at the moment of course. 

I didn't choose the 'Replaceable' option stupidly so will just have to wait I think.

[nc50lc]

How low is your selected transaction fee?
If it isn't too low, you can send it to viabtc transaction accelerator so it will be queued by their mining pool.
Link: https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/

They will accept it if the fee is higher than 10sat/B, higher fee required for SegWit because they are computing the Raw Bytes.
You should also send it right after the first few seconds of the hour, eg. 12:00-12:01 PM.

[Abdussamad]

there is no replaceable option on the send tab anymore. all outgoing transactions are replaceable by default and you can change this setting under preferences. so you should be able to bump the fee on this transaction. try long tapping it on android and see if that gives you the option.

[bitmover]

What was the fee per byte that you used? (You can check this value in any coin explorer, such as blockchair.com)


You can track here the average time for confirmation, according to your fee/byte.
https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/

According to this w3ebsite, only transactions higer than 150 sat/byte are confirmed within an hour (6 blocks).

I have 2 transactions stuck already for 12hours... I used  1 sat/byte lol

[bob123]

You can track here the average time for confirmation, according to your fee/byte.
https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/

According to this w3ebsite, only transactions higer than 150 sat/byte are confirmed within an hour (6 blocks).

This site is alsways overestimating the fees.
I wouldn't recommend to use it.

http://core.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,2h gives a pretty decent overview of the mempool.
I use the 3rd graph (Mempool Size in MB).
Currently, Transactions with 50 or more sat/B take roughly 1.8 MB of the mempool. Such a transaction should be confirmed within the next few blocks. No need to pay 150 sat/B for a confirmation within the next 6 blocks.

[dkbit98]

I'm a bit of a noob so bear with me please but have sent 0.3 via Wallet app on Android (exactly as I always do) but that has been sitting on unconfirmed for over 16 hours.  

I've been working with bitcoin for about a year and have never seen this before - I'm hoping it's just that the blockchain is frozen somehow and it'll either confirm or bounce back?  Is there any risk of me 'losing' that bitcoin?

Thanks in advance!

To avoid any issues and waiting for transactions, always try to check if BTC Mempool before sending Bitcoin..
If there are a lot of stuck transactions you will have to wait.
You can pay more fees for faster transaction or wait for mempool to clear up.
https://mempool.space/tv

[Lucius]

This site is alsways overestimating the fees.
I wouldn't recommend to use it.

http://core.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,2h gives a pretty decent overview of the mempool.
I use the 3rd graph (Mempool Size in MB).
Currently, Transactions with 50 or more sat/B take roughly 1.8 MB of the mempool. Such a transaction should be confirmed within the next few blocks. No need to pay 150 sat/B for a confirmation within the next 6 blocks.

If I only got 1 satoshi every time I read a statement like this I would be a rich man

Just two days before your post :

I find bitcoinfees.earn.com is generally pretty poor with their estimates... their "recommended" fees are usually grossly overestimated and much higher than really required.

For instance... Bitcoinfees.earn.com is currently suggesting: "The fastest and cheapest transaction fee is currently 116 satoshis/byte, shown in green at the top."

I'd recommend using the 3rd graph here: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,24h

Check to see what the fee rates are around the 0.5mb-1mb level... and use that if you want "next block" type confirmation times... which would be around 50 sats/byte at the moment.

Although you recommend jochen-hoenicke as the only relevant and reliable site when it comes to fees, maybe one of you should make a tutorial for beginners to know how to use this site.

I've been working with bitcoin for about a year and have never seen this before - I'm hoping it's just that the blockchain is frozen somehow and it'll either confirm or bounce back?  Is there any risk of me 'losing' that bitcoin?

No offense, but you haven't learned much in that one year if you have doubts about things like this. Sometimes the minimum possible fee is sufficient for the transaction to be confirmed in the next block, and sometimes you can overpay fee and wait almost a hour for 1 confirmation because time between blocks can be much longer than the average of 10 minutes.

[o_e_l_e_o]

If I only got 1 satoshi every time I read a statement like this I would be a rich man

Well, if people stopped recommending inferior fee estimators then we wouldn't need to keep correcting them. Just because something has been said before doesn't mean we should stop correcting incorrect information. bitcoinfees.earn always overestimates the fee unless you absolutely need to confirm in the next block, and looking at the mempool yourself is always going to be more accurate then what an automatic algorithm can tell you.

Although you recommend jochen-hoenicke as the only relevant and reliable site when it comes to fees, maybe one of you should make a tutorial for beginners to know how to use this site.

There's a guide for using jochen-hoenicke's site here: Make sure to avoid wasting BTC for too high fees – step by step guide (Electrum). Scroll down to point 5.

[bitmover]

Although you recommend jochen-hoenicke as the only relevant and reliable site when it comes to fees, maybe one of you should make a tutorial for beginners to know how to use this site.

Does this site recommend any fee? I see only mempool data there. I see no estimative like "use 10 sat byte to get the next 6 blocks"

If I only got 1 satoshi every time I read a statement like this I would be a rich man Roll Eyes

All of the websites do really overestimate fees, but an overestimation is better than nothing, especially for newbies...

[o_e_l_e_o]

Does this site recommend any fee?

No, there is no recommend fee on jochen-hoenicke's site. It just shows raw mempool data - it is left up to the user to decide what fee they want to use based on the data available. It is more accurate than sites which give recommended fees, as you can see the exact size of the mempool, the individual fee bands, whether the mempool is filling up or emptying, and so on.

Scroll to the bottom graph (entitled "Mempool size in MB"), mouse over the far right of the graph, and choose how close to the tip of the mempool you want to be. Within 0.1 MB will almost always put you in the next block. Within 1 MB will get you confirmed within the next block or two, provided the mempool isn't rapidly filling. Right now 60 sats/vbyte would put you within 0.1 MB and confirm you within 10 minutes. 14 sats/vbyte would put you within 1 MB and confirm you within the hour. bitcoinfees.earn on the other hand is recommending a whopping 192 sats/vbyte. That fee would put you in the top 30 transactions in a mempool of over 31,000, approximately 0.004 MB from the tip. Completely unnecessary and a gross overpayment.

If you want to use a site that just tells you a fee without thinking, then I would suggest https://coinb.in/#fees. Its current recommended fee of 88 sats/vbyte is less than half of 192 sats/vbyte, but will almost certainly still confirm your transaction just as quickly (in the next block).

[bitmover]

Scroll to the bottom graph (entitled "Mempool size in MB"), mouse over the far right of the graph, and choose how close to the tip of the mempool you want to be. Within 0.1 MB will almost always put you in the next block. Within 1 MB will get you confirmed within the next block or two, provided the mempool isn't rapidly filling. Right now 60 sats/vbyte would put you within 0.1 MB and confirm you within 10 minutes. 14 sats/vbyte would put you within 1 MB and confirm you within the hour. bitcoinfees.earn on the other hand is recommending a whopping 192 sats/vbyte. That fee would put you in the top 30 transactions in a mempool of over 31,000, approximately 0.004 MB from the tip. Completely unnecessary and a gross overpayment.

You made a nice estimation but it is not that simple, as new transactions are coming at every moment. You are not considering this, so a 14 sat fee may stay much longer within 1mb...

There must be more accurate methods

There is still so much tools to be build in our ecosystem

[o_e_l_e_o]

You made a nice estimation but it is not that simple, as new transactions are coming at every moment. You are not considering this, so a 14 sat fee may stay much longer within 1mb...

You missed where I said "provided the mempool isn't rapidly filling". No fee is ever guaranteed to get you in the next block. I could make a transaction with a fee of 2000 sats/vbyte right now, and some exchange could suddenly dump 4 MB of 2500 sats/vbyte transaction in the mempool 2 seconds later, pushing my transaction out of the next block. Even if your transaction is paying the highest fee rate of any transaction at the moment, there is still no guarantee the miner who finds the next block will pick it, or they might not even have seen it if it hasn't reached their node for whatever reason.

Any method, from manually looking at the mempool to websites which tell you what fee they recommend to wallets inputting a low/normal/high priority fee, is only ever going to be an estimation. At least if you look at the mempool yourself you can see if it is filling/emptying/static and place your transaction exactly where you want to.

There are no more accurate methods because it is impossible to predict when the next block will arrive, and it is equally impossible to predict who is going to make what transaction and what fees they are going to pay between now and when the next block arrives. Everything is going to be an estimation, but you might as well estimate with all the data available rather than just doing what some algorithm tells you to.

[HCP]

There must be more accurate methods

No...  For all the reasons outlined by o_e_l_e_o, it is simply impossible to create a "foolproof, 100% accurate, fee estimation model". The goalposts are always shifting... the best thing someone can do is learn how to interpret the information available, and then make a decision based on that information and their personal requirements. Some people want/need "next block", some people want "cheapest", some people want "cheap but relatively quick"... by looking at the mempool data, you can get a feel for what the network is up to, and what you're going to need to pay to try to achieve your desired goal.

Simply relying on a website that says "pay X sats/byte" will often lead to:

a. overpaying
or
b. confusion when a transaction doesn't confirm with the next block like the "bitcoin fee website" said it would

It's like relying on bitcoin wallets that have "economy", "standard" and (so-called) "high-priority" fee estimates.

[bitmover]

you might as well estimate with all the data available rather than just doing what some algorithm tells you to.

Algorithms are our friends , not enemies.  Pow calculations are algorithms.
 you can simple make an algorithm that does the same analysis you made   or even better using past filing mempool data to estimate the value much more precisely .

It is just a matter of finding a good website who uses a good algorithm or to make one.

And this sort of thing, such as estimating fees is one example of something that a good algorithm can make better than any person.

No...  For all the reasons outlined by o_e_l_e_o, it is simply impossible to create a "foolproof, 100% accurate, fee estimation model".

Who said about 100% accurate?
I just suggest that the newbie use some estimation instead of none...

Additionally,  as i said earlier, a more precise method would be simple to use all the data available to determinate a fee to pay to get in the next X blocks.

I think it is not that complicated to get a working algorithm that could do that.. using past mempool filling data for example

[o_e_l_e_o]

And this sort of thing, such as estimating fees is one example of something that a good algorithm can make better than any person.

Maybe the right algorithm could, but every "suggested fee" from every website and every wallet I've used has never been as accurate as my own judgement. Some are more accurate than others, sure, but I've yet to found one as good as looking at the mempool data yourself.

Additionally,  as i said earlier, a more precise method would be simple to use all the data available to determinate a fee to pay to get in the next X blocks.

I think it is not that complicated to get a working algorithm that could do that.. using past mempool filling data for example

That's what HCP and I are saying - it's impossible to develop an algorithm that can tell you the fee needed to get in the next X blocks. You would literally have to be able to predict the future - predict how long until the next block(s) is/are mined, and predict the exact size and the exact fee rate of every transaction broadcast by every user until your desired block. No algorithm can do that. Even if the algorithm just told everyone to use a fee of which will make them the highest paying unconfirmed transaction in the mempool, there could then be a delay of an hour until the next block, meaning your "highest fee" transaction is now buried 5 MB deep.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

How low is your selected transaction fee?
If it isn't too low, you can send it to viabtc transaction accelerator so it will be queued by their mining pool.

Obviously it was way too low for OP's comfort.  And I've used transaction accelerators to good effect in the past, and as long as you're not being charged for the service you've got nothing to lose.

I did notice that Electrum on my PC had increased the default fee to something crazy like 165 sats/byte as the default, and I gathered that there must be some sort of network congestion going on. 

But OP, this happens from time to time.  Sometimes transactions get confirmed extremely quickly with a low fee, while at other times you seemingly have to wait forever even with a high fee.  Hate to say it, but it's one of the sucky things about bitcoin that's driven me nuts right from the start.  And sixteen hours is a long time to wait for a confirmation, I've had instances where it's taken much longer than that.