[BETA] BTC Mempool Fees Extension/add-on for Firefox/Chrome browser

[dkbit98]

What is this?

This is simple web browser extension add-on showing and monitoring Bitcoin Mempool Fees in ticker icon on your browser toolbar using multiple websites sources.
It is Open Source, very small size and it doesn't use much of your browser resources.

What is Bitcoin Mempool?

The Mempool is a “waiting area” for Bitcoin transactions that each full node maintains for itself. After a transaction is verified by a node, it waits inside the Mempool until it’s picked up by a Bitcoin miner and inserted into a block.

https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin/mempool/

What exactly is this extension doing?

Current version (1.1 beta)

• Right click shows options to select one source for showing Bitcoin estimated fees
• Shows estimated Bitcoin Mempool Fees from mempool.space in browser ticker (default option)
• Shows estimated Bitcoin Mempool Fees from bitcoiner.live in browser ticker (second option)
• Shows estimated Bitcoin Mempool Fees from blockchain.com in browser ticker (third option)
• Left click shows Slow (Low Priority), Standard (Medium Priority) and Fast (High Priority) option for Bitcoin transactions in sat/vB
• Select one priority to show in ticker as default

Screenshots:




Where can I get it?

Code for beta version is open source, forked and available on GITHUB for inspection and compiling.

For testing on Firefox browser you can install it from official Mozilla store:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/btc-mempool-fees-extension/

For testing on Chrome or Brave browser you can currently install it as unpacked extension.
Download Package and unzip package, enable Developer mode in Chrome extensions and Load unpacked extension.
You can use it normally like any other extension.

When can we expect main release?

Extension will be released after receiving feedback and suggestions from people, and after Mozilla and Google approves it on their store.

I would appreciate any constructive feedback and suggestions from Bitcointalk community.

If you like this extension you can always DONATE and buy a coffee or something else for my dev friend who is helping me with this project.

Ideas for future dev updates:
- Notifications.
- Adding inputs and outputs.

This is beta software. Use at your own risk.

This topic is currently self-moderated to avoid spam, and any normal comments will not be deleted.

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[Insanerman]

Is it possible that you could make this an active element in any website? I mean once the user accepts and/or activates it, there would be an overlay element at the bottom-right of the entire screen that wouldn't be draggable or scrollable, just sitting there showing the live mempool fees and its changes (even for atleast every 30sconds or 1 min refresh intervals). Then it is also a good feature if a user is free to choose what theme of it as well, user preference = quality user experience. If you would love to see what I am suggesting in a clear layout, I'd be delighted to give one. 

[bitmover]

This is simple web browser extension add-on showing and monitoring Bitcoin Mempool Fees in ticker icon on your browser toolbar using multiple websites sources.

This is a very good idea, congratulations on your work.

We really need to spread the information about fees. I see so many users paying high fees because they use "standard" or "priority"transactions.

I have a suggestion:

Is it possible to add a button that would open a new page with instructions, based on the website the user is?

For example, if the user enters blockchain.com wallet,  your extension could pop-up an alert saying "Click this button here to learn how to customize fees in blockchain.com wallet and use the recommended fee"
You can point them to the official website guide. Here blockchain.com support tell how to customize fees within their wallet.
https://support.blockchain.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000939883-Explaining-bitcoin-transaction-fees

You could do that to several other wallets.

[dkbit98]

Is it possible that you could make this an active element in any website?

No sorry, this is only extension and not a widget, so there will be no development in this direction, but you can try and visit source website we used like mempool.space, bitcoiner.live, blockchain.com or some others for doing this.

Extension themes will not be added but we can tweak default theme if there are any better suggestions.
Currently we used official Bitcoin colors.

Is it possible to add a button that would open a new page with instructions, based on the website the user is?

Thanks, that is actually not a bad idea and I will have to check if it is possible to add links in extension options.


General question:

What do you think are the best API sources for estimate Bitcoin mempool fees and is there something better than three sources (mempool.space, bitcoiner.live, blockchain.com) we used for showing sat/vB fees?

[bitmover]

General question:

What do you think are the best API sources for estimate Bitcoin mempool fees and is there something better than three sources (mempool.space, bitcoiner.live, blockchain.com) we used for showing sat/vB fees?

Well, this is the problem.

All of those fee estimators are just trash imo. They overestimate fees. I have seen the mempool empty, transactions with 1 sat/byte being confirmed and electrum (which uses the same estimators from those sources) recommending 100 sat/byte

As I am maintaining a website with a service similar to yours (I use bitcoiner mempool data), I am thinking for a solution for this for some time already.
There is discussion here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5288664.0

I think this posts, from PrimeNumber7, is a nice summary of the problem:

The difficulty in estimating the required fee is you don't know when the next blocks will be found. Assuming the last block was found 1 minute ago, the next block may be found in one second, 9 minutes, or in over an hour. If the next block is found in one second, the required fee to get a transaction included in that block will be lower than if the next block is found in an hour because transactions would be included in the interim.

For transactions you need confirmed quickly, you need to overestimate the fee because of the risk there are long gaps between when the next two blocks will be found. If your program assumes 10 minutes between now and when each of the next two blocks will be found, you will underestimate the required fee to get a transaction included 1/2 the time. If your program assumes 20 minutes between now and when each of the next two blocks will be found, you will more frequently get your transaction confirmed in the next two blocks, but will also overpay most of the time.

So you can't really estimate fees, because you don't know the future.

I have made a script, posted in the same topic, which underestimating fees (the opposite of all others, including those you use, which overestimate them). I simple consider the lowest fee which would fit inside a block if a block is mined now.

Overall, this a problem which doesn't have a perfect solution.

Personally, I prefer to underestimate fees and use something like I did, instead of overpaying fees all the time  (your transaction may be confirmed within a block or it may take a while if there is a spike in the mempool)...

[Insanerman]

No sorry, this is only extension and not a widget, so there will be no development in this direction, but you can try and visit source website we used like mempool.space, bitcoiner.live, blockchain.com or some others for doing this.

AFAIK you can still implement your extension to be a widget just by making it a little html element that can overlay on any website without bypassing any security nor getting any sensitive data. It is just really good to have a multipurpose extension would have such feature. But it's really just my suggestion, the extension itself is already useful so that there would be no active tabs running just the mempool nor reload it every now and then.

General question:

What do you think are the best API sources for estimate Bitcoin mempool fees and is there something better than three sources (mempool.space, bitcoiner.live, blockchain.com) we used for showing sat/vB fees?

mempool.space is already the top-tier mempool visualizer and there are no further APIs or platforms that performs better than it does. There are some from github isn't really as good as mempool.space.

[Findingnemo]

General question:

What do you think are the best API sources for estimate Bitcoin mempool fees and is there something better than three sources (mempool.space, bitcoiner.live, blockchain.com) we used for showing sat/vB fees?

Well, this is the problem.

All of those fee estimators are just trash imo. They overestimate fees. I have seen the mempool empty, transactions with 1 sat/byte being confirmed and electrum (which uses the same estimators from those sources) recommending 100 sat/byte

I am using Mempool space for a while and it is not over estimating the fees to be honest, only ETA feature in the electrum is doing it.

But it is not actually possible to find the lowest possible value to get included in the next block better use the actual recommended value and I have been doing it. Stopped making any transactions when the fees were pushed to higher value even when there is no need and this is actually happens due to the overestimation of fees from the wallet providers.

[Pmalek]

I know it's a long shot, but maybe your developer can find a way to use the estimates provided by https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,2h as well for calculating the correct fee range. Maybe there is a way to add up all the transactions up to a certain vMB range.

For example:

Transaction fees adding up to to a total of 0.5 vMB as shown on the 3rd graph on https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,8h would be high priority.
Medium priority would be something like 2-3 vMB.
Low priority, 7-10 vMB.

You can of course edit the values according to what you think is better.

[dkbit98]

I know it's a long shot, but maybe your developer can find a way to use the estimates provided by https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,2h as well for calculating the correct fee range. Maybe there is a way to add up all the transactions up to a certain vMB range.

That website was my second choice for integration after using mempool.space as main source, but the problem was we could not find proper API page like for all other websites.
We tried several different options but some of them showed totally incorrect and wrong results in our testing, so we decided to stick with 3 mentioned before but we are ready to replace one with some better option.

We found most resources thanks to Jameson Lopp Transaction Fee Estimates collection on his website:
https://www.lopp.net/bitcoin-information/fee-estimates.html

[hugeblack]

Most of these add-ons display a Mempool Fees value that a person with knowledge of Bitcoin needs to use, and therefore he already knows those sites, it is better for him to Bookmark it instead of installing an add-on.
new people dont know vbyte, Memempool, sat/vB ...etc

It is best to be as follows:

Enter type of address, the number of Inputs, the number of outputs = the result { The best fees as (faster, average, saving.) With adding resources.}

[dkbit98]

Most of these add-ons display a Mempool Fees value that a person with knowledge of Bitcoin needs to use, and therefore he already knows those sites, it is better for him to Bookmark it instead of installing an add-on.

We are not discovering warm water here again, but just using all those websites and collecting them in one simple monitoring open source tool.
Values are currently only shown in sat/vB but we plan to add dollar, bitcoin and other alternative values for newbies, and I am sure everyone knows the difference with lower and higher numbers.

Enter type of address, the number of Inputs, the number of outputs = the result { The best fees as (faster, average, saving.) With adding resources.}

What would be the best website doing this calculation in your opinion?

[bitmover]

Enter type of address, the number of Inputs, the number of outputs = the result { The best fees as (faster, average, saving.) With adding resources.}

What would be the best website doing this calculation in your opinion?

I can help you code this. You don't need to collect data from any website.

Transaction size calculation is better done by calculation. The math is very simple.

Which language are you using to code your extension? Javascript?

I have the javascript code ready, that I created myself to bitcoindata.science (with some help from friends in technical discussion board), and it is very precise. I just can't handle mixed input/outputs formats, but if you choose the most common input format the result is very close to the actual transaction size.

I can help you create something similar to what I have in my website. The user enter the number of inputs/outputs, the address format and the feerate. Then the extension returns the total fee in usd and/or btc.

[TryNinja]

Enter type of address, the number of Inputs, the number of outputs = the result { The best fees as (faster, average, saving.) With adding resources.}

What would be the best website doing this calculation in your opinion?

This one is pretty good: https://coinb.in/#fees

You can look at their code here: https://github.com/OutCast3k/coinbin/blob/9a0175e18fcc8be3598f660d257a7237fa62fbed/js/coinbin.js#L2032

[dkbit98]

I can help you code this. You don't need to collect data from any website.

Thanks for offering to help buddy, and we do have some plans to update extension with new features in next release but we don't want to totally drop monitoring other websites like mempool.space.
We can for sure add something like entering inputs/outputs, address formats and maybe also dollar value for monitoring, but it all has to be super simple so that even kids can understand it.
You can check out open source code for extension in this GITHUB page.

This one is pretty good: https://coinb.in/#fees

You can look at their code here: https://github.com/OutCast3k/coinbin/blob/9a0175e18fcc8be3598f660d257a7237fa62fbed/js/coinbin.js#L2032

Thanks Ninja
I actually found five btc transaction calculators HERE and that one is included.

[dkbit98]

I can help you code this. You don't need to collect data from any website.

Bitmover are you still available and willing to help me with updating BTC Mempool extension?

I want to introduce optional manual entering inputs/outputs and few other improvement changes but my developer friend is currently busy with other projects.

[bitmover]

I want to introduce optional manual entering inputs/outputs and few other improvement changes but my developer friend is currently busy with other projects.

I can help you.  However, I don't have experience with browser extensions.

You want to calculate transaction size, right? I have a code ready for transaction size that I used in bitcoin data.science.

Can you give me more details?

If you need to get transaction fee suggestions we can get it from mempool.space API

[dkbit98]

I can help you.  However, I don't have experience with browser extensions.

Thanks!
I will send you PM with more details in next few days, but please download and try my extension to get idea what I would like to improve.
There is something wrong with link you posted, but we can use that code from your website.

If you need to get transaction fee suggestions we can get it from mempool.space API

I am already using data for estimation by default from mempool.space, and other alternative websites bitcoiner.live and blockchain.com.

[dkbit98]

Update:
My dev friend is currently not available so I can't do much myself with btc mempool extension.
Please write here if you want to help and if have any cool idea for updating and improving this extension.

[dkbit98]

Bitcoin fees are going crazy this weekend and you can monitor this 24/7 with BTC Mempool Fees Extension.
I updated images and fix some links, so everything should work fine now.

Please note that github link is down, but extension is still working fine and you can download it from official Mozilla store for Firefox browser.
For Chrome/Brave browser download Package and unzip package, enable Developer mode in Chrome extensions and Load unpacked extension.
This will work like any other extension in your browser.