Electrum Wallet RBF Feature

[o_e_l_e_o]

Apart from the privacy factor, if we receive inputs in multiple addresses, we can use the feature of coin control in electrum, especially useful when we need to spend small amounts.

You can still use coin control even if all the UTXOs are on the same address. Just because they are on the same address does not mean you need to spend them all at once, and you can easily pick and choose any individual UTXO to spend alone or any subset of UTXOs to spend together.

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[noormcs5]

As I said above, it could take months for the mempool to settle back down again. If you don't need to spend these outputs, then there's no rush.

Are you sure the mempool will settle down in the coming months? Also since we have halving in about a few months from now and the mining reward will be cut in half, will that have a positive or negative effect on the transactions fee? What happened to the Tx fee from prior halving to post halving?

I am asking this because if I intend to spend my funds in the bull market, it is better to wait or consolidate the inputs now 

[Charles-Tim]

Are you sure the mempool will settle down in the coming months?

He posted that it could take months, it may be far more than next month. What I am guessing is that mempool may not be less congested as it was before with high fee priority of 1 sat/vbyte.

Also since we have halving in about a few months from now and the mining reward will be cut in half, will that have a positive or negative effect on the transactions fee?

What that will mostly have effect on transaction fee is still the mempool congestion. Also as the price of bitcoin is increasing, the more the transaction fee that would be paid in fiat. Assuming for 1 input and 2 outputs, the fee used at fee rate of 25 sat/vbyte is 0.0000358 BTC at bitcoin price of $26562, the fee in United States dollar is $0.903. If the price of bitcoin move up to $100000, the fee which is 0.0000358 BTC would be $3.58. I get that fee in dollars by multiplying the fee in BTC by the price of bitcoin in United States dollar.

What happened to the Tx fee from prior halving to post halving?

The mempool will most likely become more congested but the congestion may later reduce as it has always been in the past.

I am asking this because if I intend to spend my funds in the bull market, it is better to wait or consolidate the inputs now  Huh

If the mempool become slightly less congested, it is better to consolidate your inputs.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Are you sure the mempool will settle down in the coming months?

No one can predict the future.

What happened to the Tx fee from prior halving to post halving?

At the time of the last halving, fees were 1 sat/vbyte. In the two weeks following the last halving, they peaked at around 30-50 sats/vbyte for a relatively quick confirmation, and then fell back to 1 sat/vbyte again.

I am asking this because if I intend to spend my funds in the bull market, it is better to wait or consolidate the inputs now  

No one can say for sure. I would note the current fees right now are the highest they have been in around 3 months, so right now would seem to me like a bad time to consolidate UTXOs.

[noormcs5]

I am asking this because if I intend to spend my funds in the bull market, it is better to wait or consolidate the inputs now  

No one can say for sure. I would note the current fees right now are the highest they have been in around 3 months, so right now would seem to me like a bad time to consolidate UTXOs.

Today i noticed some strange behavior in mempool fees. There are some blocks minded with very high fee and in between there are blocks minded with only 7 sat/vbyte fee.

https://mempool.space/block/0000000000000000000072a8a509b8cfbcac0d821dfe51bc1c9e2d700a2d9ace      26Sat/vbyte (809448)

https://mempool.space/block/00000000000000000001788cdb7d3eee9263e79c29e59bd15fed7ce7e827724d    7 Sat/Vbyte  (809447)

One block you get 26Sat/vbyte fee and the very next block is mined at only 7 Sat/Vbyte and this has been happening all day today. Don't know any special reason for this  

[o_e_l_e_o]

There is nothing unusual here. The numbers you are looking at are the median fee per block. If a number of higher fee paying transactions have been broadcast since the last block, then they will skew the median to be higher. Once these transactions are mined, the median will move back down again. If it takes longer to find a block, then there will be more higher fee transactions in the mempool and so again the median will be higher.

All you are seeing here is normal variation between blocks. Look at the fee ranges, and you will see they are very similar.

[Yamane_Keto]

One block you get 26Sat/vbyte fee and the very next block is mined at only 7 Sat/Vbyte and this has been happening all day today. Don't know any special reason for this  

these three blocks are

• Block 809446 Timestamp ‎2023-09-26 17:24 Median fee ~11 sat/vB
• Block 809447 Timestamp ‎2023-09-26 17:27 Median fee ~7 sat/vB
• Block 809448 Timestamp ‎2023-09-26 17:42 Median fee ~26 sat/vB

Mining block 809447 took 3 minutes after 809446, which contained 2994 transactions. mining pool will not risk waiting for new transactions to come with higher fees, will broadcasting the mined block and earning 6.25 BTC instead of waiting for high fees that may be less than 0.5 BTC.
While block 809448 was mined with enough time for there to be many transactions with higher fees.

In fact, if two blocks were mined with a small time difference, many transactions may not be included in the new one because  block reward is higher than fees and this has happened many times

[noormcs5]

One block you get 26Sat/vbyte fee and the very next block is mined at only 7 Sat/Vbyte and this has been happening all day today. Don't know any special reason for this  

these three blocks are

• Block 809446 Timestamp ‎2023-09-26 17:24 Median fee ~11 sat/vB
• Block 809447 Timestamp ‎2023-09-26 17:27 Median fee ~7 sat/vB
• Block 809448 Timestamp ‎2023-09-26 17:42 Median fee ~26 sat/vB

Mining block 809447 took 3 minutes after 809446, which contained 2994 transactions. mining pool will not risk waiting for new transactions to come with higher fees, will broadcasting the mined block and earning 6.25 BTC instead of waiting for high fees that may be less than 0.5 BTC.
While block 809448 was mined with enough time for there to be many transactions with higher fees.

In fact, if two blocks were mined with a small time difference, many transactions may not be included in the new one because  block reward is higher than fees and this has happened many times

Thanks for this explanation but how about this, Just now Block mined with 0 Sat/Vbyte 



Block No: 809586
https://mempool.space/block/000000000000000000028c1835751761157c0c9fc4934923095005ed80779c2f

These days I am watching the mempool way too closely 

[o_e_l_e_o]

Thanks for this explanation but how about this, Just now Block mined with 0 Sat/Vbyte  

Again, completely normal.

This happens when a block is found very quickly (within a second or two) after the previous block. For these couple of seconds, the mining pool is busy verifying every transaction in the block they have just received, updating their mempools to remove all the transactions which have just been confirmed, and then building a new candidate block filled with transactions to send to all the miners in their pool to start to attempt to mine. For those few seconds, rather than having all their miners sitting idle, they simply attempt to mine an empty block. Very occasionally they are successful in these couple of seconds, and so they mine an empty block. Although they will earn no fees, they will still earn the block subsidy.

If mining pools did not verify all the transactions in the block they just received before having their miners work on the next block full of transactions, then they would very likely try to include transactions which had just been mined, meaning their block would be invalid.

[noormcs5]

I would note the current fees right now are the highest they have been in around 3 months,

For almost a week now, I am noticed that the mempool tx fee is consistently dropping. Now you can easily get your tx confirmed with 5 sat/vbyte and it may easily go down to 4 sat/vbyte, a figure which was looking almost impossible to get confirmation two weeks before.

Now, what special has happened that the Tx fee is decreasing rapidly?
It is that people are doing fewer Bitcoin transactions or is it related to an increase in the number of miners or there is any other reason I am not aware of

[Z-tight]

Now, what special has happened that the Tx fee is decreasing rapidly?
It is that people are doing fewer Bitcoin transactions or is it related to an increase in the number of miners or there is any other reason I am not aware of

People are not doing fewer tx's, ordinals spam is the most recent event that is causing network congestion and a spike in tx fees, so since the fee rate is dropping, it means that there has been a reduction in ordinals transactions which bloats the mempool. As you can see as well, the number of unconfirmed tx's in the mempool is also reducing, if i remember correctly it was above 600k few weeks ago, now it is below 200k. Take note that network congestion affects BTC tx fee and fee rate, so in short, fee rate has dropped because congestion has lessened.

[o_e_l_e_o]

It is that people are doing fewer Bitcoin transactions or is it related to an increase in the number of miners or there is any other reason I am not aware of

You can see if we are mining blocks faster than average by looking at this page: https://newhedge.io/terminal/bitcoin/difficulty-estimator

At the moment, we are only two blocks behind the number of "expected" blocks. In other words, we are mining blocks at almost exactly a 10 minute average, and are only very marginally behind where we should be. The current predict length of this difficulty period is 14 days and 30 minutes, when it "should" be 14 days exactly. So no, no sudden surge in miners or hashrate.

You will occasionally see on that page that we are dozens of blocks ahead or behind of where we should be, and as a result we will then have large difficulty adjustments of several percent. Not at the moment though.

[noormcs5]

Now, what special has happened that the Tx fee is decreasing rapidly?
It is that people are doing fewer Bitcoin transactions or is it related to an increase in the number of miners or there is any other reason I am not aware of

People are not doing fewer tx's, ordinals spam is the most recent event that is causing network congestion and a spike in tx fees, so since the fee rate is dropping, it means that there has been a reduction in ordinals transactions which bloats the mempool. As you can see as well, the number of unconfirmed tx's in the mempool is also reducing, if i remember correctly it was above 600k few weeks ago, now it is below 200k. Take note that network congestion affects BTC tx fee and fee rate, so in short, fee rate has dropped because congestion has lessened.

As per my understanding, if the Mempool TX fee is high, this means that miners are making more money and this suits them right ?

So this Bitcoin Ordinals thing, which is not liked by many of us because it makes the bitcoin blockchain congested, the miners would like it because it then helps them get more fee for mining?

Also, this means that when the mempool fee is low, the miner's reward becomes low too, again a situation not favourable for miners 

[satscraper]

Now, what special has happened that the Tx fee is decreasing rapidly?
It is that people are doing fewer Bitcoin transactions or is it related to an increase in the number of miners or there is any other reason I am not aware of

People are not doing fewer tx's, ordinals spam is the most recent event that is causing network congestion and a spike in tx fees, so since the fee rate is dropping, it means that there has been a reduction in ordinals transactions which bloats the mempool. As you can see as well, the number of unconfirmed tx's in the mempool is also reducing, if i remember correctly it was above 600k few weeks ago, now it is below 200k. Take note that network congestion affects BTC tx fee and fee rate, so in short, fee rate has dropped because congestion has lessened.

As per my understanding, if the Mempool TX fee is high, this means that miners are making more money and this suits them right ?

So this Bitcoin Ordinals thing, which is not liked by many of us because it makes the bitcoin blockchain congested, the miners would like it because it then helps them get more fee for mining?

Also, this means that when the mempool fee is low, the miner's reward becomes low too, again a situation not favourable for miners  

Each of your three questions deserves a single short answer, i.e. YES. Regarding the fee. the interests of miners and ordinary users who send transactions are always opposite. Users want to pay less for their transactions and that is why they don't like those surges of transactions with ordinals that  force them to increase the fee to make sure their trxs will not stuck, while miners always benefit   from higher fee whatever the cause of fee's increase.

[o_e_l_e_o]

As per my understanding, if the Mempool TX fee is high, this means that miners are making more money and this suits them right ?

Yes, although the difference is generally not huge and the block subsidy still makes up the majority of their rewards. If you look at a recent block, for example, you'll see the mining pool earned 6.25 BTC from the block rewards and only 0.12 BTC from fees. Even if you look back a week or so to when minimum fees for the next block were 50 sats/vbyte or more, then the miner is still only earning 0.5 BTC from fees, so less than 10% of their overall block reward.

So this Bitcoin Ordinals thing, which is not liked by many of us because it makes the bitcoin blockchain congested, the miners would like it because it then helps them get more fee for mining?

Yes.

Also, this means that when the mempool fee is low, the miner's reward becomes low too, again a situation not favourable for miners  

It becomes lower, but not too low. As time goes on, thn miners are using more and more efficient hardware and source cheaper or even free electricity from renewable sources, allowing them to continue to make profits and operate despite their rewards falling. Indeed, global hashrate is currently at an all time high, around 410 EH/s.