Mempool issue and suggestion: Better if Mempool was planned differently

[EarnOnVictor]

**If this is not the right place, kindly help me move it to the right section**

Nothing is perfect in life, and Bitcoin is not an exception, I believe there is more to be done. As much as I appreciate and advocate for Bitcoin since I adopted it, I won't still turn a blind eye to the issues that need to be resolved, if possible. The pressing one is the issue related to the high fee/congestion period in which transactions could be unconfirmed for only God knows when.

For over 2 weeks, I've not seen the unconfirmed transactions in the mempool lower than 250,000, which is not acceptable with a good system. There should be a modality/plan/rule (as you might call it) that even miners must obey in which transactions must not be abandoned for more than a certain period of time irrespective of the fee used. It could be within 24 hours, a week, or a month at max (I don't recommend this long), it doesn't matter. Not that people's money would be held in the system without a stamped date it would ever be confirmed.

Many people are victims of this, they transferred their money for a purpose and the system holds as much as over 250,000 of such for so long. I will not blame them (the senders) because it's not everybody that knows the right wallets to use or have much understanding of Bitcoin like BTT members and many others. Even some that understand might just be caught in this unplanned.

Miners have taken this mostly as business, and will always go for the highest fee disregarding the health and sanity of the network. Yet, developers could make it difficult for miners who have significant transactions with lower fees unattended to, particularly those that are due for their maximum dates. Meaning that the system could be designed in such a way that miners MUST take a certain percentage of low-fee transactions along with the high fees they want so that no transactions would be delayed for too long.

Satoshi has left everything in the hands of everybody, so this is a challenge to the Bitcoin community and developers if they are reading this. There should be a way they could make miners accountable and more ethical instead of turning the system solely into a pure business for themselves. Some would rather make you pay an outrageous fee to accelerate your stuck transaction even if the money sent is little. This is now business-orientated for them rather than the respect for the network.

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[BlackBoss_]

For over 2 weeks, I've not seen the unconfirmed transactions in the mempool lower than 250,000, which is not acceptable with a good system.

It brings inconvenience, uncomfortable experience for users but what is your criteria for an acceptable good system?

For me, it must be a system that won't have technical ability to revert transactions, charge backs. It won't censor transactions which are broadcasted by users. You have all these with bitcoin blockchain and you have freedom to use low fee rate and wait longer or higher fee rate and enjoy faster confirmation.

Many people are victims of this, they transferred their money for a purpose and the system holds as much as over 250,000 of such for so long.

If they use centralized exchanges, their withdrawals will be proceeded with high transaction fee rate enough to be confirmed by miners. They won't have to wait too long if I am correct.

If they use non custodial wallets and broadcast transactions by themselves, they must use opt-in Replace-by-Fee. They can bump their transaction fee rate any time when they lose their patience or have more urgent need.

[Charles-Tim]

The pressing one is the issue related to the high fee/congestion period in which transactions could be unconfirmed for only God knows when.

For over 2 weeks, I've not seen the unconfirmed transactions in the mempool lower than 250,000, which is not acceptable with a good system.

People should use a better wallet. I made a transaction on Bluewallet recently, a transaction of 12 sat/vbyte, it takes around 2 weeks and I was able to see the coin back on my wallet and I rebroadcast it again with higher fee and it was confirmed. I have noticed this on Electrum too before I tried it on Bluewallet.

There are some wallets that might be rebroadcasting the transaction, or maybe set their nodes not to drop unconfirmed transactions that are over 14 days. But it is 14 days by default on Bitcoin Core and some other full node. Although a node runner can edit it and increase the days that unconfirmed transaction should stay in its mempool.

But most importantly, I will advice you to read this topic too: Bitcoin open source wallets that support replace-by-fee (RBF)

Do not use a wallet that do not support RBF.

[DaveF]

...Do not use a wallet that do not support RBF.

Take it past there to do not use a wallet that does not support RBF *by default* IMO that check box should be checked by default.
And give a warning if it's not.
Not the other way around.

I screwed up the other day, and did not notice that for whatever reason RBF was not checked and set a lower fee non RBF transaction. Not a big deal since I just did a CPFP with the change. But, I tend to make BTC transactions a few times a week and would like to think that I know what I am doing.

If I can screw that up, then anyone can.

-Dave

[Deddyhoku]

People will start to use 1sat fee if they will 100% know that this is enough. Sounds like a huge problem for miners

[franky1]

bitcoin is code.
code creates rules

summary: create rules

for instance those that spam transactions every block take away space for normal folk. whilst pushing up the fees for normal folk

there actually can be a rule where transactions which have a utxo of under 6(~an hour) have to be the ones that pay a premium or be given a score rating where it multiplies a priority score needed to be in a block

there used to be one

put it this way imagine you had a score requirement of priority of 1440
where each confirmation your utxo has earns 10 points meaning if you only spend your value once a day you get priority defacto. meaning you can pay low amount such as 1sat/byte
where as if you are only holding a utxo if 1 confirm you only have 10 points and the only way to earn the other 1430 points is to pay a higher fee. where by each sat per byte = 10 points. meaning if you want to spam every block you have to pay 143sat per byte

that way not everyone is punished. just the spammers

things like this dont affect normal folk. because usually exchanges only sweep deposit addresses once a day or week anyway. and put it into cold wallet and only split cold wallets once a month. and then the can assign that down to 30 splits for each day of the month. meaning when people withdraw they are using yesterdays-upto a month ago's utxo, so pay the lowest fee to get funds out of an exchange.
same goes for normal folk who just do p2p. normal people are not buying products/goods/services every 10 minutes. they only buy one thing a day,month, year so they wont be paying premium under this idea

and to enforce it. if a block contains transactions not meting the priority score one way or another. the block is rejected. meaning pools are made to obide by the rule or not get their block accepted.. as is the way of consensus

and before the corporate sponsored shills of dev idolation, cry that it cant be done or that it goes against cores corporate roadmap of brutalising bitcoin to promote other networks.. well who cares about populating other networks. thats the game for scumbags
plus there is already a BAD fee mechanism in play that makes legacy tx 4x. meaning that while they want to pretend it cant/shouldnt be done. its proven that it has and is being done that a fee mechanism can be in play. .. but this time a better one that actually helps bitcoiners. not the corporate plan of offboarding users to other networks

[darkv0rt3x]

People will start to use 1sat fee if they will 100% know that this is enough. Sounds like a huge problem for miners

I don't think so. There would always be transactions with higher fees and only a percentage of smaller fee transactions! It would be a way of miners to also include those transactions without completely ruining their business!

[Zaguru12]

Miners have taken this mostly as business, and will always go for the highest fee disregarding the health and sanity of the network. Yet, developers could make it difficult for miners who have significant transactions with lower fees unattended to, particularly those that are due for their maximum dates. Meaning that the system could be designed in such a way that miners MUST take a certain percentage of low-fee transactions along with the high fees they want so that no transactions would be delayed for too long.

Not a bad idea, but developers can’t hold miners to account because this isn’t like a centralized entity that a company or person would be charge to do something or receive sanction. This is an open field where everyone can be a miner and take any transactions they feel like into there blocks. We can’t just charge the miners to take lower transaction fees without also pointing fingers at the amount they spend on mining equipments. After spending that amount on those equipments and sometimes on electricity, it will not be logical to accuse them of prioritizing high fees moreover who isn’t on this for the profit purposes.

The first thing solution now is to educate bitcoiners about the knowledge of wallet to be used so as to bump fees when needed. Secondly to find a way to filter this ordinal or BRC20 tokens off the blockchain. Thirdly with more adoption probably the cost of mining would reduce and will have more miners which will increase the decentralization of it

[EarnOnVictor]

It brings inconvenience, uncomfortable experience for users but what is your criteria for an acceptable good system?

I don't know why you asked what I just explained in my post. There are a lot to be done but the subject matter remains what I wrote. Yours might be different from this, but it still does not matter, that's mine at present.

If they use centralized exchanges, their withdrawals will be proceeded with high transaction fee rate enough to be confirmed by miners. They won't have to wait too long if I am correct.

If they use non custodial wallets and broadcast transactions by themselves, they must use opt-in Replace-by-Fee. They can bump their transaction fee rate any time when they lose their patience or have more urgent need.

It's in the post as well. That's for those who are aware and also use the right wallets. Do you think everybody knows this? The post is not about me and what I know alone, it's for everybody that could be benefited. And it's possible this happens in the future, after all, the network is being upgraded frequently.

The pressing one is the issue related to the high fee/congestion period in which transactions could be unconfirmed for only God knows when.

For over 2 weeks, I've not seen the unconfirmed transactions in the mempool lower than 250,000, which is not acceptable with a good system.

People should use a better wallet. I made a transaction on Bluewallet recently, a transaction of 12 sat/vbyte, it takes around 2 weeks and I was able to see the coin back on my wallet and I rebroadcast it again with higher fee and it was confirmed. I have noticed this on Electrum too before I tried it on Bluewallet.

There are some wallets that might be rebroadcasting the transaction, or maybe set their nodes not to drop unconfirmed transactions that are over 14 days. But it is 14 days by default on Bitcoin Core and some other full node. Although a node runner can edit it and increase the days that unconfirmed transaction should stay in its mempool.

I will advice you to read this topic too: Bitcoin open source wallets that support replace-by-fee (RBF)

Do not use a wallet that do not support RBF.

I quite understand all this, but my post is not about those who are well experienced in Bitcoin but for all. I can't use my understanding and know-how to judge others, and that doesn't still mean I can't capture their interest in my wish. For unconfirmed transactions to be as high as that means that many people didn't know. My wish is for a system that will be friendly to all irrespective of the wallet used.

While some might be victims simply because they were lectured about Bitcoin and wallets by someone who knows little or nothing about it. This explains why some people are still using custodial wallets. Can we totally blame them? No, it's just the unfortunate way they adopted it and the exposure at their disposal.

That's why I called for a system that will make sure transactions are confirmed at a maximum time regardless of your experience.

People will start to use 1sat fee if they will 100% know that this is enough. Sounds like a huge problem for miners

Not when you want your transaction confirmed fast. My plight is that transactions should not be unconfirmed for too long and without even knowing when they would ever be confirmed. Nothing could be more painful in some circumstances like that.

[SamReomo]

That's truly a big concern for everyone and there should be some rules for the miners to include the low fee transactions in their blocks. But, the question arises that who would set those rules because miners are the real bosses till this date and  who could force them to add the low-fee transactions in the blocks? The answer is no one.

There can't be a solution for the problem because if the miners are forced to do anything that's against their will, they will leave away such systems where they can't earn a lot. The miners are basically doing the mining thing as a business and any businessmen would prefer to earn as much from a business as possible. If the miners were doing it for humanity purpose or for love of technology then that would be another thing.

The best option for anyone is to understand the basics of Bitcoin transactions so that they can choose the preferable wallet software according to their needs. The knowledge regarding such things should be a compulsory thing, and everyone should prefer the wallet software that supports features like RBF, and CPFP, because these features are very helpful for stuck transactions.

[Charles-Tim]

That's why I called for a system that will make sure transactions are confirmed at a maximum time regardless of your experience.

The first bitcoin addresses are uncompressed legacy addresses, the have higher fee than compressed legacy addresses. From compressed legacy to nested segwit with further fee reduction. From nested segwit to native segwit with more fee reduction. Comparing compressed legacy to native segwit, there is 42% to 50% or more in fee reduction, depending on the transaction inputs and outputs. Developers have not been relaxing too. We should respect that.

There was a time, a fork that led to Bitcoin Cash, to increase block size. Another thing is that develoers will also may still be trying to avoid what can lead to such hard fork. Know that miners also have say. Example is Segwit and Taproot activation, mines are the ones that are flagging the block mined to be in support or not. Miners are the ones that earn from fee and they have upper say about it too.

If you want to make your suggestions to be heard, you have to be one of the bitcoin developers and you will have to make an official proposal that will show your aim, how you want to achieve it. Other developers may accept it or not. If accepted, but regarding fee reduction proposal, miners (mining pools) are the ones that will signal support, or not signal anything.

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

Many people are victims of this, they transferred their money for a purpose and the system holds as much as over 250,000 of such for so long. I will not blame them (the senders) because it's not everybody that knows the right wallets to use or have much understanding of Bitcoin like BTT members and many others. Even some that understand might just be caught in this unplanned.

In every problem, there's always a solution, though it may take a little while before this solution arrives but there will always be a rescue means, for the sake of those that are used to bitcoin transactions and network, they can always pump the fee if the transaction is not coming faster as expected and provided they aren't using a centralized exchange in making the transaction, those inexperienced in this can always choose a high priority for their transaction but the cost for that is at their expense which is fair.

Miners have taken this mostly as business, and will always go for the highest fee disregarding the health and sanity of the network.

I believe i everything there's always a peak period for it performance, maybe this is one of their own, though we are all being affected while they enjoys such, maybe we should be getting used to this already becau after the whole blocks have been completely mined, the miners will have to depend on the transaction fee for thier reward.

Yet, developers could make it difficult for miners who have significant transactions with lower fees unattended to, particularly those that are due for their maximum dates.

Or maybe the developers should take the ordinals completely away the blockspace on the blockchain to layer 2 where transactions are less busy there, this may be a solution that can last for now.

Meaning that the system could be designed in such a way that miners MUST take a certain percentage of low-fee transactions along with the high fees they want so that no transactions would be delayed for too long.

It can't work that way since it's already programmed by transaction fee rate and not by randomly selection or order of time each transaction was made, put yourself in their shoe, you will also consider the option of higher transaction fees as priority first before others.

[OgNasty]

Nothing is perfect in life, and Bitcoin is not an exception, I believe there is more to be done. As much as I appreciate and advocate for Bitcoin since I adopted it, I won't still turn a blind eye to the issues that need to be resolved, if possible. The pressing one is the issue related to the high fee/congestion period in which transactions could be unconfirmed for only God knows when.

For over 2 weeks, I've not seen the unconfirmed transactions in the mempool lower than 250,000, which is not acceptable with a good system. There should be a modality/plan/rule (as you might call it) that even miners must obey in which transactions must not be abandoned for more than a certain period of time irrespective of the fee used. It could be within 24 hours, a week, or a month at max (I don't recommend this long), it doesn't matter. Not that people's money would be held in the system without a stamped date it would ever be confirmed.

I think the mempool is simple and effective.  I think it is perfect and is one of the few things about Bitcoin I can't see needing any type of change.  What you're proposing would require more blockspace, as simple as that.  Otherwise, you'd be creating a system where delayed transactions have an advantage over quick transactions, which I don't think is the type of thing you want to be incentivizing.  The only incentive that Bitcoin needs is the block reward.  Incentives like blockspace advantages for Lightning is what leads to issues like we are currently experiencing with Ordinals.  Should have never been done.

[stompix]

Miners have taken this mostly as business, and will always go for the highest fee disregarding the health and sanity of the network. Yet, developers could make it difficult for miners who have significant transactions with lower fees unattended to, particularly those that are due for their maximum dates. Meaning that the system could be designed in such a way that miners MUST take a certain percentage of low-fee transactions along with the high fees they want so that no transactions would be delayed for too long.

This will backfire and will simply make things worse.

If you have 1 million transactions in the mempool there is no way for them to be confirmed in a shorter time, what this "solution" would do is simply reduce the space available by allowing spammers to occupy parts of the block space with low 1 sat/b fee, with just a few hundred dollars you can fill a block and normal users would have to compete again between themselves on a smaller part of the block cause a spammer is taking advantage of it.
Besides, let's assume somebody will want to attack the network like this, as I posted in another topic, it will take a guy less than 10 BTC to fill one week of tx, how will this solution that will confirm the cheapest spam attack solve anything?

Miners have taken this mostly as business, and will always go for the highest fee disregarding the health and sanity of the network.

Nobody stops anyone to buy hardware, power them up and pointing them to a community mining pool that only builds blocks with fees under 5 sat/b.
Oh wait, there is something, called $.The same $ you don't want to pay in the first place! See the problem?

Thirdly with more adoption probably the cost of mining would reduce and will have more miners which will increase the decentralization of it

That's not how mining works, you can have everyone on this planet hosting a 1GW mining farm in his basement, and you will still have 144 blocks a day.

[umbara ardian]

I find enforcing specific rules for miners to include low-fee transactions challenging due to Bitcoin's decentralized nature. Where miners are autonomous entities and there is no centralized authority that can dictate their behavior. Trying to force miners to include specific transactions could risk undermining the principles of decentralization on which Bitcoin is built. So what needs to be done is to continue to explore and develop technology solutions, such as layer two scaling solutions, to improve scalability, reduce fees, and enhance the overall user experience. body.

[hZti]

I find enforcing specific rules for miners to include low-fee transactions challenging due to Bitcoin's decentralized nature.

Also bitcoin was specifically not designed that way for many reasons. The main reason is, that it is harder to spam the network if you need to pay higher and higher fees for it. Since there is no central authority that can block specific users, this is the only way to ensure that an attacker will think twice if it is worth it to spam the network.
The other thing however is the block size. If it would be my decision the block size would be doubled tomorrow. We are not in 2011 any more, yet still the network has the same capacity (with millions of users instead of just a few hundred).

[Artemis3]

With a decent wallet like Electrum you know when they drop (don't accept) your transaction, nothing is lost but time. Hopefully we will see more and more nodes dropping the spam instead...

[BlackHatCoiner]

For over 2 weeks, I've not seen the unconfirmed transactions in the mempool lower than 250,000, which is not acceptable with a good system

Depends on how you look at it. If you want a sustainable, deflationary, decentralized currency, then you should want hundreds of thousands, if not millions, transactions in the mempool, because that's where the mining income will come from. If you want a crappy, get-rich-quick shitcoin, that provides no tangible benefit to the world, then yeah, no need to pay high fees. There's fiat.

If they use centralized exchanges, their withdrawals will be proceeded with high transaction fee rate enough to be confirmed by miners. They won't have to wait too long if I am correct.

Binance recently suspended withdrawals due to high fees, even if you tolerated it financially. Just another reason to avoid such exchanges.

[pawel7777]

...Do not use a wallet that do not support RBF.

Take it past there to do not use a wallet that does not support RBF *by default* IMO that check box should be checked by default.
And give a warning if it's not.
Not the other way around.

I screwed up the other day, and did not notice that for whatever reason RBF was not checked and set a lower fee non RBF transaction. Not a big deal since I just did a CPFP with the change. But, I tend to make BTC transactions a few times a week and would like to think that I know what I am doing.

If I can screw that up, then anyone can.

-Dave

I wasn't that lucky, I made a low fee transaction from Mycelium wallet which does not support RBF, and since I spent entire available balance, I can't use CPFP bump.
So now I had to wait for it to either be forgotten by the network or for the fees to come down. But as anyone can potentially rebroadcast any transaction and there's no guarantee the fees will come down any time soon - it could be stuck for a very long time.

[joniboini]

So now I had to wait for it to either be forgotten by the network or for the fees to come down. But as anyone can potentially rebroadcast any transaction and there's no guarantee the fees will come down any time soon - it could be stuck for a very long time.

That's unfortunate. Does this mean you never publish RBF transactions before? I suggest moving to another wallet that supports RBF by default (or those that offer more coin control in general).

Not when you want your transaction confirmed fast. My plight is that transactions should not be unconfirmed for too long and without even knowing when they would ever be confirmed. Nothing could be more painful in some circumstances like that.

One of the easier solutions is to use other networks if you need a fast transaction. RBF is also mandatory if you still want to force to use Bitcoin when the network is busy and being spammed by others. I believe you should view the "long time to confirm" as the security required to make sure your transaction is irreversible. We've seen many rollbacks on some altcoin networks before, I don't think that's a good thing to aim for. CMIIW.