[solved] wildly different mining fees

[callmejoe]

i am running bitcoin core v0.21.0

when i run bitcoin-cli estimatesmartfee 6 i get 0.00000149335 BTC per byte.  that's $0.067/byte

https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/ shows fees at 0.00000102 BTC/byte. that's $0.046/byte

these 2 bitcoin fees sites are showing fees less than $1 for an entire transaction (224 bytes).   how can this be?
https://bitcoiner.live/?confidence=0.9
https://privacypros.io/tools/bitcoin-fee-estimator/

[1714975350]

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[1714975350]

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[pooya87]

Bitcoin core mostly reports and uses fees using kilo-bytes instead of bytes. The documentation[1] also shows that estimatesmartfee returns fee as "fee per kilobyte". That means 1 satoshi/byte becomes 1000 satoshi/kbyte.

As for bitcoinfees.earn.com, this site is malicious and has always been reporting outrageously higher fees. The current fee rate 102 satoshis/byte they are reporting is about 100 times more than what you actually have to pay because mempool is small and almost all transactions are paying 1 sat/vbyte.
Check out the following much better website to see the mempool and fees: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,24h,weight


[1] https://bitcoincore.org/en/doc/0.20.0/rpc/util/estimatesmartfee/

[nc50lc]

This is simply because not all nodes have the exact same mempool.
And mostly all of these estimators are based from their node's mempool, some are considering the last few blocks.

So even if it's based from "estimatesmartfee", you'll likely get a different results.
Moreover, the sites that you've motioned likely have their own algorithm on estimating transaction fee.

[callmejoe]

This is simply because not all nodes have the exact same mempool.
And mostly all of these estimators are based from their node's mempool, some are considering the last few blocks.

So even if it's based from "estimatesmartfee", you'll likely get a different results.
Moreover, the sites that you've motioned likely have their own algorithm on estimating transaction fee.

looks like using the economical option for estimatesmartfee gives a much lower fee estimate.  i guess that option may just look at the last few blocks like you mention. where the conservative option looks at a longer block history. may take longer time period to adjust...im guessing

[nc50lc]

-snip-

looks like using the economical option for estimatesmartfee gives a much lower fee estimate.  i guess that option may just look at the last few blocks like you mention. where the conservative option looks at a longer block history. may take longer time period to adjust...im guessing

AFAIK, specifically, "estimatesmartfee" is using the transactions in the node's mempool, the "estimate mode" just changes the history range to consider.
The other fee estimation command, "estimaterawfee" uses both mempool and blocks transactions in the estimation. [CMIIAW]

[bitmover]

I think mempool.space is the best fee estimator and mempool visualization interface.

It is simple to understand and the fee suggested is usually correct.

That being said, almost every website o overestimate fees. Usually this is good because transactions do not get stuck, the problem is that people end up paying higher fees.

Personally, I try to see the mempool and look for the smallest fee rate possible to pay to get into the top 1mb jn the mempool . I did an estimator that does that, but It is suggesting slightly higher fees when mempool is empty (need to fix that)
https://bitcoindata.science/plot-your-transaction-in-mempool.html

[callmejoe]

I think mempool.space is the best fee estimator and mempool visualization interface.

It is simple to understand and the fee suggested is usually correct.

That being said, almost every website o overestimate fees. Usually this is good because transactions do not get stuck, the problem is that people end up paying higher fees.

Personally, I try to see the mempool and look for the smallest fee rate possible to pay to get into the top 1mb jn the mempool . I did an estimator that does that, but It is suggesting slightly higher fees when mempool is empty (need to fix that)
https://bitcoindata.science/plot-your-transaction-in-mempool.html

yes i stumbled upon mempool.space yesterday. i agree, nice interface and easy to understand. 

i switched to using estimaterawfee and looks like it suggests fees closer to what i see on mempool.space