Stuck transaction

[Pocketchange]

Hi everyone I miscalculated my fees on receiving a transaction. I set them too low for how busy the mempool is.

Are my only options at this point is to use cpfp or wait til the mempool gets less busy?
I tried using sparrow wallet to cpfp but I had no luck connecting my hardware wallet's unconfirmed transaction.
Thanks in advance!

[1714819736]

1714819736

[1714819736]

1714819736

[1714819736]

1714819736

[1714819736]

1714819736

[Edwardard]

How much fee (in sat/vB) did you give for the transaction ?
You can paste the transaction id here so someone can help you accelerate it, or you can accelerate it yourself for free through viabtc accelerator[1]. But you have to be fast since it gives you a chance to accelerate only once in an hour(UTC time) imo. Only 100 free transactions are accelerated by them in one hour. But if you are successfull in submitting, your tx will get confirmed by viabtc 100%.
[1] https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator

[Pocketchange]

I set it to 1sat    
 I tried viabtc accelerator earlier but it said my fee was too low.

[nc50lc]

I tried viabtc accelerator earlier but it said my fee was too low.

Viabtc's free accelerator service only accepts 10sat/B transactions or higher.
On a side note: it's not "sat/vB" so if a txn is SegWit, the minimum fee rate may be higher if converted to sat/B.

Your options are either RBF if it's flagged to be replaceable or CPFP the change if it has any. Both incur additional fee but works differently.
The problem is if your wallet supports those options and/or can work out a workaround to manually create such transaction.
So which wallet was it sent from?

[Pocketchange]

Thanks I should have been more clear.

I dont think I can go the RBF route because I'm the receiver.

I'm using a ledger wallet so I think there's a way to cpfp through electrum.
I dont totally understand cpfp but im reading a lot.

Thanks! How bad of an idea is it to wait a week or two while I slowly learn cpfp?

[Edwardard]

I set it to 1sat   
 I tried viabtc accelerator earlier but it said my fee was too low.

Ah, I see.

I dont think I can go the RBF route because I'm the receiver.

Who is the sender here who set such low fee ?

I'm using a ledger wallet so I think there's a way to cpfp through electrum.
I dont totally understand cpfp but im reading a lot.

Its not that difficult. To create a CPFP transaction right click on the unconfirmed transaction on the history tab and choose “Child pays for parent”. Set an appropriate fee and click on “OK”. A window will popup with the unsigned transaction. Click on “Sign” and then “Broadcast”.
More here: https://bitcoinelectrum.com/how-to-do-a-manual-child-pays-for-parent-transaction/

Thanks! How bad of an idea is it to wait a week or two while I slowly learn cpfp?

I think the transaction will be forgotten and returned back to the sender within 4-5 days if nothing is done

[nc50lc]

Thanks! How bad of an idea is it to wait a week or two while I slowly learn cpfp?

I'd bet that it won't take a week for it to confirm, but it's hard to predict the mempools.

If you plan to use Electrum, it'll be straightforward.
After creating a wallet connected to your ledger with the correct account,
the unconfirmed transaction should be displayed in the history after a few seconds (minutes if it's first time install)
By right-clicking the transaction, there should be a "Child pays for parent" option among the menu.

Thanks! How bad of an idea is it to wait a week or two while I slowly learn cpfp?

I think the transaction will be forgotten and returned back to the sender within 4-5 days if nothing is done

Bitcoin Core's default is 14days (336hours), but not all nodes enforce the same settings so it may stay longer than that.

[Pocketchange]

it was a p2p trade on a decentralized bitcoin exchange.
I set the fee for 1 sat /vb when receiving the transaction.

I'll try the electrum /hardware wallet setup again but im not good with linux yet

I hope its not only 4-5 days.  Im already on day 3.


In a nutshell is Child pays for parent basically resending that unconfirmed transaction to myself again with higher fees?

Mod note: consecutive posts merged

[Edwardard]

Bitcoin Core's default is 14days (336hours), but not all nodes enforce the same settings so it may stay longer than that.

Its a long time ago, but I had such issue with my mycelium wallet and the transaction got returned a lot earlier.

In a nutshell is Child pays for parent basically resending that unconfirmed transaction to myself again with higher fees?

Yes, you will basically use the same output of the unconfirmed tx and send it to your own another address which you control.

[hosseinimr93]

Its a long time ago, but I had such issue with my mycelium wallet and the transaction got returned a lot earlier.

As mentioned by nc50lc, the default time is 14 days.
If your transaction was removed from the mempool earlier, that was probably because the network was so congested and the nodes removed your transaction from their mempool due to reaching the maximum size of the mempool.
It's very unlikely that OP's transaction will be removed from the mempool earlier than 14 days.

[LoyceV]

In a nutshell is Child pays for parent basically resending that unconfirmed transaction to myself again with higher fees?

Correct. If the original transaction has 1 input and 2 outputs, you don't even have to pay a lot in fee. Just 1000 sat or even less will probably be enough to reach the next block. You only have to get ahead of the bulk of transactions with 1 sat/byte and some that pay 2 sat/vbyte.

I set the fee for 1 sat /vb when receiving the transaction.

For next time: 1.1 sat/vbyte puts you ahead of the many low fee transactions.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Your options are either RBF if it's flagged to be replaceable or CPFP the change if it has any.

This doesn't help OP, but Luxor are consistently mining transactions which are replacing non-opted-in transactions, i.e. they are running full RBF. If you can get your replacement transaction to them, then you will be able to use RBF even if your original is not opted in. They are only mining around 1 block a day at present, however.

It's very unlikely that OP's transaction will be removed from the mempool earlier than 14 days.

The mempool usage of my node running default mempool settings is currently around 260 MB. That's very close to the limit of 300 MB at which point low fee transactions start being evicted. It seems other nodes also hit this limit yesterday, and would have started evicting transactions: https://statoshi.info/d/000000020/memory-pool?viewPanel=1&orgId=1&from=now-7d&to=now (note that 286 MiB is equivalent to 300 MB).

[Pocketchange]

I set the fee for 1 sat /vb when receiving the transaction.

For next time: 1.1 sat/vbyte puts you ahead of the many low fee transactions.

Thanks everyone I appreciate the help!

I really like Loyce's advice above @ 1.1 sat/vb.

Which leads me to another question
How do each of you choose fees if you're not in a rush?

I have a feeling 1sat /vb might be a thing of the past. Correct me if Im wrong.

I just don't want to have the transaction somehow disappear or be in limbo indefinitely  

Thanks again EVERYONE! I'm learning alot  

[Edwardard]

I have a feeling 1sat /vb might be a thing of the past. Correct me if Im wrong.

Its not true. This is one of the segwit transactions[1] made by me just a few days ago and I paid 1.02 sat/vB as miner fee. It got confirmed the same day I sent it (infact within few hrs). It just depends on how congested the mempool is.
[1] https://mempool.space/tx/950db15c4e58449152f95c21706b111bc8c0e2ee0697a6e1afa5330f8f1de2d5

I just don't want to have the transaction somehow disappear or be in limbo indefinitely 

Use a good self-custodial wallet to make future transactions which gives you a calculated fee by itself and you can choose the lowest one if your tx is not of high priority and you dont want it to get dropped from mempool as well.

[Pocketchange]

I have a feeling 1sat /vb might be a thing of the past. Correct me if Im wrong.

Its not true. This is one of the segwit transactions[1] made by me just a few days ago and I paid 1.02 sat/vB as miner fee. It got confirmed the same day I sent it (infact within few hrs). It just depends on how congested the mempool is.
[1] https://mempool.space/tx/950db15c4e58449152f95c21706b111bc8c0e2ee0697a6e1afa5330f8f1de2d5

Funny you mention that. I had a transaction that evening and it went smooth that day also.
What would you consider congested? I'm guessing if its purging transactions >300mb - its congested. Is that a good indicator?

Which wallet would you suggest? I'm mostly going into a hardware wallet.

Thank you!

[Edwardard]

What would you consider congested? I'm guessing if its purging transactions >300mb - its congested. Is that a good indicator?

Check mempool.space, it is purging transactions <1.78 sat/vB currently. So atleast pay a fee above the given rate. Also, checkout the total no. of unconfirmed tx chart in the mempool here: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/mempool-count
This gives you an idea on how much pending transactions are on the line and how fast they are increasing. They have been increasing since 9th feb quite rapidly, suggesting a network congestion.

Which wallet would you suggest?

Bluewallet, mycelium, electrum all are good. Bluewallet (mobile wallet) always gives me the best rates as per my expirience. But a hardware wallet is also good, just check the mempool before you make a transfer and you should be fine.

[nc50lc]

In a nutshell is Child pays for parent basically resending that unconfirmed transaction to myself again with higher fees?

Quite, the underlying method is to spend the output of an unconfirmed transaction; it doesn't matter where you'll send it.
The original transaction wont be "resent" but "spent".

And now that I've mentioned it, you can basically CPFP it in Electrum in your next transaction by selecting that stuck transaction's output using "coin control".
Just enable "Coins" tab (View->Show Coins), select that transaction's output plus more if it's not enough for your transaction (CTRL+LeftClick to multi-select).
Right-click to open the menu and choose "Spend"; when you go to the spend tab, those coins will be used.
Just set the fee rate higher than the recommended to bump the parent transaction.
That's if you still haven't done CPFP.

[LoyceV]

Which leads me to another question
How do each of you choose fees if you're not in a rush?

See my topic on consolidating small inputs. I don't think my Bitcoin Core ever drops my transactions on it's own, it just keeps broadcasting them. So 1 sat/vbyte would work just fine (if I'm patient enough).

I have a feeling 1sat /vb might be a thing of the past. Correct me if Im wrong.

Your "feeling" doesn't mean anything Look at fees during the past year or 6 years: fees always went down again!

I just don't want to have the transaction somehow disappear or be in limbo indefinitely  

If the transaction disappears, you can make it again. It's not as if your Bitcoins disappear. If it's in limbo forever, you can either set your wallet to drop it, use RBF, or use CPFP. It all starts by using a good wallet.

What would you consider congested? I'm guessing if its purging transactions >300mb - its congested. Is that a good indicator?

Back in 2017, I once paid $25 in fees for a small transaction. That was congested. Even 400 sat/byte wasn't enough, fees would just go higher.

Which wallet would you suggest? I'm mostly going into a hardware wallet.

I would suggest to at least try out different wallets: Electrum with a hardware wallet, Bitcoin Core on your own system, and a mobile wallet for on the road. Just see what works for you.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I have a feeling 1sat /vb might be a thing of the past. Correct me if Im wrong.

You're wrong. It make take a few days or a few weeks, but the mempool will empty out again.

What would you consider congested? I'm guessing if its purging transactions >300mb - its congested. Is that a good indicator?

I wouldn't necessarily say it was only congested if we start purging transactions. If we have been stuck with 200mb of mempool memory usage for a day or more, then I would definitely call that congested, for example.

Also, checkout the total no. of unconfirmed tx chart in the mempool here: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/mempool-count

I don't find total transaction count a very useful indicator at all. We can have thousands of transactions which are only a few hundred vbytes in size each and don't take up much space at all, and conversely, occasionally an exchange like Binance will drop a handful of consolidation transactions which are all tens of thousands of vbytes in size. We can end up with the same amount of block space taken up by 10 transactions or 1,000 transactions.


Personally, I use a combination of https://mempool.space/ and https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),8h,weight to pick my fee for a transaction.

[serveria.com]

Hi everyone I miscalculated my fees on receiving a transaction. I set them too low for how busy the mempool is.

Are my only options at this point is to use cpfp or wait til the mempool gets less busy?
I tried using sparrow wallet to cpfp but I had no luck connecting my hardware wallet's unconfirmed transaction.
Thanks in advance!

Don't worry these low-fee 1sat/byte transactions get confirmed eventually you'll just have to wait. You can use some free tx accelerator to speed things up. During the latest market move from ~23k area down to 21k+ mempool was really busy so I had to wait a bit longer than normal. But all my transactions went through eventually, no need for cpfp.

[hosseinimr93]

Don't worry these low-fee 1sat/byte transactions get confirmed eventually you'll just have to wait.

Transactions are usually confirmed even if the fee rate is too low, but there is no guarantee that your transaction will be finally confirmed.
Your transaction will be removed from the mempool, if it isn't confirmed in 14 days. It's also possible that your transaction is removed from the mempool due to limited capacity of the mempool.

You can use some free tx accelerator to speed things up.

The only working free transaction accelerator I know is ViaBTC which doesn't accept transactions with the fee rate of lower than 10 sat/byte.

[Pocketchange]

Thanks again everyone! Mempool traffic is kinda bonkers lately huh!? Is this mostly from inscriptions/ ordinals?

[Edwardard]

Thanks again everyone! Mempool traffic is kinda bonkers lately huh!? Is this mostly from inscriptions/ ordinals?

Correct, the trend continues towards the upside after Luxor, a bitcoin mining pool, mined a record-setting 3.96 MB block (#774,628) on the Bitcoin blockchain[1]. We are witnessing a sharp around 122% increase in btc network fee one week after this[2]. Its mainly caused by ordinals + we got some cpi data yesterday which increased the volatility and maybe transactions increased a bit more causing more congestion.
[1] https://news.bitcoin.com/block-sizes-exceeding-3-mb-now-common-on-bitcoin-blockchain-as-ordinal-inscription-demand-rises/

[2] https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoins-average-transfer-fees-experience-sharp-increase-122-rise-in-10-days/

[hosseinimr93]

Thanks again everyone! Mempool traffic is kinda bonkers lately huh!? Is this mostly from inscriptions/ ordinals?

Hasn't your transaction been removed from the mempool?
Due to big size of unconfirmed transactions and according to mempool.space, transactions with the fee rate of less than 1.41 sat/vbyte are purged from the mempool.
Can you still see your transaction on block explorers?

[khaled0111]

it was a p2p trade on a decentralized bitcoin exchange.
I set the fee for 1 sat /vb when receiving the transaction.

Not sure about this p2p exchanges policy when it comes to canceled transactions, but if I were you and the transaction is still stuck then I would accelerate it immediately by sending the unconfirmed output to one of my addresses (CPFP) to avoid any trouble.
Mempool is so congested right now (>360mb of unconfirmed transactions) and it may take days before it clears up. Your transaction may get purged in the meanwhile!

[o_e_l_e_o]

Not only the wallet support RBF, the transaction itself must have RBF flag enabled.

As I explained above, now that a significant minority of the network is running full RBF, and at least one mining pool is mining full RBF replacements, then this isn't strictly true anymore.

Mempool is so congested right now (>360mb of unconfirmed transactions) and it may take days before it clears up.

Note that there is actually "only" around 65 vMB of unconfirmed transaction in the mempool. The 360 MB figure you are quoting is the dynamic memory usage (i.e. the RAM usage) of these transactions after they have been deserialized. If no more transactions were added to the mempool, and assuming an average block size of ~2 vMB, then it would take 33 blocks to clear this backlog, and not 180 blocks.

[stompix]

Note that there is actually "only" around 65 vMB of unconfirmed transaction in the mempool. The 360 MB figure you are quoting is the dynamic memory usage (i.e. the RAM usage) of these transactions after they have been deserialized. If no more transactions were added to the mempool, and assuming an average block size of ~2 vMB, then it would take 33 blocks to clear this backlog, and not 180 blocks.

Mempool has 80vMb with higher purging rates than others, make that ~120vMB at 500MB with purging everything under ~1.2sat/b, so one can easily assume that if a bit of it is cleared a lot of the 1sat/b sanctions that have been purged will come back, it's highly unlikely that everyone that had a broadcasted 1sa/b tx just went and upped the fee. Then add the extra 37 blocks we had due to more hashing power and it's a lot worse than just 33 blocks.

3 days till the weekend, although the mess started also during the weekend!
Does anyone have a link, graph or something that counts these "minting' transactions/day?

[Pocketchange]

Sorry   for not mentioning that my 1sat/vb transaction did clear a few days ago . A 3sat/vb cleared pretty quickly a few days ago also. I've heard of 10sat/vb taking over 6 hrs as of yesterday.  

Me personally I wont be setting a 1sat/vb transaction anytime soon. Maybe ever. Those extra sats/vb I pay extra hopefully will save me time and headaches.  

I find those accelerators pretty fishy.

Thanks everyone! I appreciate all of you!

[LoyceV]

I find those accelerators pretty fishy.

Viabtc worked for years, but only if you pay at least 10 sat/byte. And by the time that's needed, you won't be the only one so it's hard to get into their queue. All the other "free accelerators" are useless.

[hosseinimr93]

Me personally I wont be setting a 1sat/vb transaction anytime soon. Maybe ever. Those extra sats/vb I pay extra hopefully will save me time and headaches.  

If you set the fee rate to 8 sat/vbyte, your transaction would be less than 1 vMB from the tip and will be probably confirmed soon.
Note that the required fee is dynamic and it can change over time. If I were in a hurry, I would set the fee rate to 10-12 sat/vbyte.

I find those accelerators pretty fishy.

Viabtc worked for years, but only if you pay at least 10 sat/byte. And by the time that's needed, you won't be the only one so it's hard to get into their queue. All the other "free accelerators" are useless.

I also confirm that ViaBTC free accelerator works well.

[Sarah Azhari]

Me personally I wont be setting a 1sat/vb transaction anytime soon. Maybe ever. Those extra sats/vb I pay extra hopefully will save me time and headaches.  

You can set 1 sat in whatever you want, But 1st, before you set it, just look on mempool 1st and look at how many transactions are at that time. Because, sometimes I ever look at 1 sat that only has under 500 txs unconfirmed, which means with 1 sat you only have to wait about 10 minutes to confirm.

Just save your sat.
why should be more if you can 1

[hosseinimr93]

You can set 1 sat in whatever you want, But 1st, before you set it, just look on mempool 1st and look at how many transactions are at that time.

For estimating the required fee rate, you shouldn't look at the number of unconfirmed transactions. You should look at the size of unconfirmed transactions, considering that each block can include up to 1 vMB of transactions.

[ABCbits]

Not only the wallet support RBF, the transaction itself must have RBF flag enabled.

As I explained above, now that a significant minority of the network is running full RBF, and at least one mining pool is mining full RBF replacements, then this isn't strictly true anymore.

In other words, it's still generally true. Besides, the wallet software must have feature to create conflicting transaction or at least delete unconfirmed transaction from the wallet itself.

Does anyone have a link, graph or something that counts these "minting' transactions/day?

User @d5000 create one, although it's about size/day rather than TX/day.

I made a little visualization about the size of ordinal inscription transactions, to be able to follow the evolution of their impact in the chain:

https://dune.com/d5k/ordinals-by-size

--snip--

[serveria.com]

Don't worry these low-fee 1sat/byte transactions get confirmed eventually you'll just have to wait.

This isn't accurate. Most node have 300MB mempool size limit (after transaction is deserialized) and currently unconfirmed transaction already surpass the default limit. If you bother visit https://mempool.space/, currently it purge all transaction with fee rate < 1.08 sat/vB from the mempool.

Well, my only source is my experience. And so far every single tx with 1sat/byte fee has been processed eventually just like I mentioned before. Disclaimer: I don't send/receive Bitcoin every single day so perhaps there are periods of time when it won't work. But I've been lucky so far.