Unconfirmed coins and frozen addresses

[ilib]

I have Electrum Version 3.3.8 on Mac

Some addresses have unconfirmed coins, I used "Freeze" option for those addresses, then I checked "Spend only confirmed coins" in Electrum properties.
Anyway, Electrum sends from addresses including frozen ones. It also can be seen in transaction preview under "Send" tab before the transaction is sent.
If I use "Spend from" the transaction will not be broadcasted and I receive an error something like "Server returned an error, try to select another server..."

Is this a bug? I saw on this forum that people use these features and everything seems to be fine.

What's wrong with my electrum or what I missed? Please help!!!
 

[jackg]

Sounds like a bug but v4.0.0 has since been released, is there a reason you're using an old version. I had to use 3.3.8 before though and everything seemed to work find with sending a transaction.

What does the indicator at the bottom left say, are you connected? Are you able to take a screenshot of the problem and have you checked the addresses are frozen? It might be that there isn't enough funds in unfrozen addresses so it's using frozen ones...

[ilib]

I sure am connected and there are plenty addresses with sufficient and confirmed balance to send from.

My Mac is El Capitan (10.11) The latest Electrum requires Mac OS 10.13, Hopefully I will upgrade my mac soon first.

But I wonder that Electrum is the most popular wallet and if this is a bag there is no way I'm the first one who noticed that. I searched for this issue on github as well so I will ask them tomorrow.
 I believe that highly likely I just missed something

[pooya87]

this could be an issue with the unconfirmed status of those coins, i couldn't reproduce this bug with confirmed coins which may also be why nobody encountered this problem before.

[nc50lc]

Some addresses have unconfirmed coins, I used "Freeze" option for those addresses, then I checked "Spend only confirmed coins" in Electrum properties.
Anyway, Electrum sends from addresses including frozen ones.

This sounds like Electrum is including your wallet's "local transactions" in your new transaction's inputs.

It also can be seen in transaction preview under "Send" tab before the transaction is sent.
If I use "Spend from" the transaction will not be broadcasted and I receive an error something like "Server returned an error, try to select another server..."

This again looks like you've created a transaction using a local transaction as an input then the server returned that error because it's rejected by its node.
I might be rejected because the input was already spent by another transaction or it's just invalid.

Do the icons of those "unconfirmed transactions" looks like "three white gears" or a "computer monitor"?
Because I've been using freeze and coin control function of v3.3.8 and I never found any issue with it.

[ilib]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/10z1a6zs6v7ttqe/Screenshot%202020-07-14%2015.21.18.png?dl=0

Check this screenshot above. This is Transaction preview

I am going to send a small amount of BTC from an address with quite sufficient and confirmed balance.
I checked "Spend only confirmed coins" in Electrum properties
I marked "Freez" the addresses with unconfirmed coins and they are greyed in address list
Now you can see that "spend from" address is not included in transaction preview.
It looks like Electrum collects Bitcoin dust anyway independant on settings and selected Spend from address.
If I sign and broadcast this transaction it will wait till the parent transactions get confirmed (may be for ages)
And this makes IMPOSSIBLE further use of Electrum till those coins are confirmed.

So if you want to punish someone just send him one satoshi with zero transaction fee

[ranochigo]

Check this screenshot above. This is Transaction preview

I am going to send a small amount of BTC from an address with quite sufficient and confirmed balance.
I checked "Spend only confirmed coins" in Electrum properties
I marked "Freez" the addresses with unconfirmed coins and they are greyed in address list
Now you can see that "spend from" address is not included in transaction preview.
It looks like Electrum collects Bitcoin dust anyway independant on settings and selected Spend from address.
If I sign and broadcast this transaction it will wait till the parent transactions get confirmed (may be for ages)
And this makes IMPOSSIBLE further use of Electrum till those coins are confirmed.

So if you want to punish someone just send him one satoshi with zero transaction fee

Hmm, I can't seem to replicate this at all. Might be specific to Mac builds; maybe someone with a Mac can try this out?

In the meantime, you can try to go to View>Show coins to use manual coin selection to freeze and select coins? Try using v4.0.2, download and verify from the official website.

[HCP]

I checked "Spend only confirmed coins" in Electrum properties

Can you provide a screenshot of your Electrum "Transactions" preference tab settings?

I've not personally had any issues with 3.3.8 and freezing addresses/"spend from" doing unexpected things... so I'm wondering if there is a combination of settings that might be causing this?

[nc50lc]

Have you resolved the issue?
Because the "spend from" address's balance was already spent: 36FpaSVB6WdZmwk4KRqH3FVv2rHV1QAhM6

So if you want to punish someone just send him one satoshi with zero transaction fee

That will be rejected by most nodes anyways; 1sat/B on the other hand can be easily CPFP~ed by the receiver (intentional or not by using higher fee).
That's unless the attacker's low-fee unconfirmed parent's size is too high, it'll be expensive to CPFP.

[ilib]

Have you resolved the issue?
Because the "spend from" address's balance was already spent: 36FpaSVB6WdZmwk4KRqH3FVv2rHV1QAhM6

No. The stuck transactions were finally confirmed in a couple of days

1sat/B on the other hand can be easily CPFP~ed by the receiver (intentional or not by using higher fee).
That's unless the attacker's low-fee unconfirmed parent's size is too high, it'll be expensive to CPFP.

Good idea! Next time I sure will try it

[ilib]

Can you provide a screenshot of your Electrum "Transactions" preference tab settings?

I've not personally had any issues with 3.3.8 and freezing addresses/"spend from" doing unexpected things... so I'm wondering if there is a combination of settings that might be causing this?

There is nothing to get confused. I checked two checkboxes out of four: "Use change addresses" and "Spend only confirmed coins"

I posted this issue on Github and one guy from the team answered that I need to upgrade to 4.0.2 as a lot of related code was modified there. So, now I need to upgrade my Macbook (autumn 2008) first as it will not run MacOS 10.13.

[HCP]

That's unfortunate that 4.0.2 won't run on your current hardware, but the good news is that this issue doesn't seem to be a problem in 4.0.2.

When you use "Spend From" in 4.0.2... it actually tells you that coin control is active and how many UTXOs you have selected/are including:




One last thought... have you considered running a Virtual Machine, like Oracle VirtualBox or similar, on your Macbook and loading up something like Ubuntu and see if you can get 4.0.2 working in that? Might be worth testing before dropping $$$ on a new Macbook.