What's with the 10000+ sat / vb Transactions

[DaveF]

https://explorer.btc.com/btc/transaction/5bca3df97f4bd155b75432a7fd2907e4ddc1d6e75452e314a0038de921eb3818
https://explorer.btc.com/btc/transaction/134d1e7ff9b765f4ee59d355d4a365845540a537d78380b0e404b92ae0f53193
https://explorer.btc.com/btc/transaction/36b21256456434d7932930124976916cb47d833f12ed15af34d662aa35336de9

I mean there is the mempool is congested and I want to or have to be in the next block and then there are these.
Bad programming of wallets?
People who don't know better?

I don't think they are errors because of the number of them happening over the last few hours.

Your thoughts?

-Dave

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[m2017]

This is probably due to the fact that people wanted to get to the first positions in the mempool or simply have extra money that they are willing to donate to miners.

In fact, such high fees for transactions chosen by users may be the reason for their low awareness of the bitcoin (banal low interaction experience), as well as standard settings (or broken settings) in popular hardware wallets, such as a Ledger or Trezor, which is why inflated commissions were spent.

If these are not errors, then a conscious choice of these users? Take a look at these numbers:
0.08675072 BTC      ~3150$
0.09754833 BTC      ~3550$
0.02717640 BTC      ~990$

Immodest amounts, to be honest, to throw it away like that.

[Zaguru12]

I don't think they are errors because of the number of them happening over the last few hours.
Your thoughts?

I also do not think it is errors because all the three transactions where at first broadcasted with less than 210sats/vbyte fee rate which could have gotten them confirmed in few blocks but the all opted for bumping of the transaction. Also I believe this also not a wallet fee estimation error as wallet which supports fee bumping and taproot address hardly run into such errors when compared to the ones that do not support them.

[Charles-Tim]

This is probably due to the fact that people wanted to get to the first positions in the mempool or simply have extra money that they are willing to donate to miners.

Which means they are just ignorant or they just want to donate bitcoin to miners that mine the next block which will contain their transactions. Less than 500 sat/vbyte is still highly enough to get a transaction into the next mined block. This is just my opinion. It is a waste of money on fee if not donating it to miners. I also think it was not because of wallet wrong fee estimation.

[Eternad]

I’m always a victim of low transaction fee suggested by the wallet itself but I never encounter a wallet suggested fee that is insanely high. Most of the time it just lower to the average fee probably because it’s late to update the fee when average fee hike.

Maybe this is a fat finger mistake or overlooked the conversion of fee unit. I sometimes mistakenly think that the fee is just in sat and not in sat/vB.

[tbct_mt2]

I mean there is the mempool is congested and I want to or have to be in the next block and then there are these.
Bad programming of wallets?
People who don't know better?

I don't think they are errors because of the number of them happening over the last few hours.

This issue appeared in the past and developers of some big wallet softwares like Bitcoin Core, Electrum built a warning to their wallet users if a fee rate is too expensive, over paid. I believe those warnings are enough for a user to recognize that a fee rate he inputs for broadcasting a transaction is something wrong.

I am unsure about other wallet softwares but their developers likely follow developments of Bitcoin Core and Electrum to add something similar into their wallet softwares.

I doubt these transactions are like planned one from miners, mining pool owners to self send bitcoins from wallet A to wallet B to fud the market or to spam the mempools and cause a fee race to help miners get more transaction fees.

The last time mempools are terrible like this is in 2017.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

If these are not errors, then a conscious choice of these users? Take a look at these numbers:
0.08675072 BTC      ~3150$
0.09754833 BTC      ~3550$
0.02717640 BTC      ~990$

Immodest amounts, to be honest, to throw it away like that.

Whatever the reason, it's a lot of money in fees that not many people can afford to throw away, as you say, and certainly not for a long time.

I also do not think it is errors because all the three transactions where at first broadcasted with less than 210sats/vbyte fee rate which could have gotten them confirmed in few blocks but the all opted for bumping of the transaction. Also I believe this also not a wallet fee estimation error as wallet which supports fee bumping and taproot address hardly run into such errors when compared to the ones that do not support them.

Interesting, and even more mysterious, because when they bumping the transaction, they have multiplied it by the hundreds.

[alani123]

If you were to go to ordinals.com and check the contents of blocks, you'd notice that much of the block space is taken over by "BRC-20" token transactions, which are really inefficient, as well as uploading pictures and portions of pointer text on the bitcoin blockchain to represent avatars and whatnot for the so called ordinal NFTs.

So really the bitcoin blockchain is going through a lot of spam from these types of transactions. Recent updates like Taproot and its opcodes, along with segwit discounts, make it comparatively easier for these large transactions to get sat/vByte discounts. So they have an unfair advantage on how they fill up the blockchain, and do it for on-chain tokens like you'd see in Ethereum.

So really, this is what's causing all the bloat. There's no way around it and I predict this time it's going to last longer or perhaps not even end. Exchanges like OKcoin have really been promoting these types of tokens, even encouraging their users to transact in this way... So there's a lot of promotion to just add bloat to the bitcoin blockchain.

[Charles-Tim]

Maybe this is a fat finger mistake or overlooked the conversion of fee unit. I sometimes mistakenly think that the fee is just in sat and not in sat/vB.

I think this may likely be the reason, or one of the reasons. But what people are inputting is the fee rate, not the fee. But it is true that some people may be confused and think that the fee rate is the fee. After the fee rate has been inputted or customized to individuals choice, the wallet will still estimate the fee to be paid before the wallet user will click on broadcast. But maybe it is just not like that on some wallets.

[DaveF]

Looking at this one using mempool.space since they give a slightly nicer view of them:

https://mempool.space/tx/5bca3df97f4bd155b75432a7fd2907e4ddc1d6e75452e314a0038de921eb3818

You can see it is a CPFP so although it's a fee of 61,092 sat/vB the effective rate is still crazy at 29,410 sat/vB.

This one:

https://mempool.space/tx/134d1e7ff9b765f4ee59d355d4a365845540a537d78380b0e404b92ae0f53193

Is also CPFP at 87,881 sat/vB effective rate of 22,454 sat/vB

I'm sure the miners thank them for their support.....

-Dave

[Solosanz]

That's scary especially if the mistake was because of the poor estimator or error from the wallet, however I'd hope if there's a proposal to limit the fee, so whenever someone accidentally send 10,000 sat/vbyte but the highest fee at that time was only 500 sat/vbyte, his transaction fee should be adjust to 501 sat/vbyte.

Now the question is, will the miner send back the extra coins just like F2Pool.

[Marvelman]

This seems like incompetence by the programmers who wrote the software and backend systems.  The code probably works fine under normal conditions, but falls apart when things get really busy like now.  That's because the programmers didn't properly test the code before releasing it.  The same thing happens with some trading bots I've seen - they work okay when markets are calm but go haywire when volatility spikes.

[PX-Z]

That's scary especially if the mistake was because of the poor estimator or error from the wallet, however I'd hope if there's a proposal to limit the fee, so whenever someone accidentally send 10,000 sat/vbyte but the highest fee at that time was only 500 sat/vbyte, his transaction fee should be adjust to 501 sat/vbyte.

There are custodial wallets who behave like that like the blockchain.com wallet, where it suggest higher fees, mycelium also suggest at least twice/thrice the current fee on its "normal fee".

Now the question is, will the miner send back the extra coins just like F2Pool.

That's not possible but i don't think miners will refund them, unless it's more than a whole bitcoin or more just like the thread you linked.

[Adbitco]

Let me just assumed they are newbies investors or traders who doesn't know how to set their fees or what sat to include as fee. A fellow Nigerians inboxed me for his error of trying to send about 100$ and he spent about $78 for gas fee he asked if there is any way to get it restored he said he was confused about the sat/vbyt so he didn't know what to do and before he knew it he continued the transactions so when he noticed was when his transaction was quickly confirmed and his balance reduces above his expectations that was when he noticed it according to how he explained to me. Like I was mad over him, I did a transfer the other day with 60 sat/vbyte and I used an accelerator provided by our brother @Charles-Tim and the tools he provided really help to be frank because my transaction were confirmed it actually took few hours to be confirmed but at least it's better paying such huge amount as gas fee.

[Z-tight]

however I'd hope if there's a proposal to limit the fee, so whenever someone accidentally send 10,000 sat/vbyte but the highest fee at that time was only 500 sat/vbyte, his transaction fee should be adjust to 501 sat/vbyte.

The point here should be for people to use good wallet softwares to store and send their BTC and to check mempool.space before broadcasting tx's, the wallet cannot 'correct' or 'adjust' your fee rate when you have already chosen what you want to pay in order to broadcast your tx, though good wallet softwares like Electrum would warn users when they are about to pay an excess in fees, but if they decide to go ahead, the tx would be broadcasted to the network in that way.

Now the question is, will the miner send back the extra coins just like F2Pool.

The overpayment by Paxos was ~ 19 BTC, which is excess by a country mile, neither did the miners have to return it, but they just decided to, the amount here is not close to that.

[Faisal2202]

If these are not errors, then a conscious choice of these users? Take a look at these numbers:
0.08675072 BTC      ~3150$
0.09754833 BTC      ~3550$
0.02717640 BTC      ~990$

Immodest amounts, to be honest, to throw it away like that.

OMG, people are really spending that much transaction fee, they must be millionaires or billionaires who don't care about $3,500+ money. Well, I really feel jealous here, as they are spending my savings of 8 months for just a transaction fee. Haha, now I also want to be that rich. Whenever in the future a person asks who is rich or how much money a poor person should invest in BTC (these topics have already been asked before), I will definitely say that a rich person is one who doesn't care to invest $3540 in a transaction of $15k roundabout.

It's damn sure that they don't care about the money, they just want their transaction to be confirmed as soon as possible. And Christmas comes early for the miners of these TXs. It might be a possibility that they wanted other people to increase their transaction fees even more than they already have so the miners could earn more. If that's the case, then it is possible that the person who made these transactions is the one who mined them, which is itself not an easy task, but if you win the previous block, then you can choose which transaction to mine in the next block.

I don't know how true I am here because I just learned this information a few days ago when I searched on Google for how to validate or confirm our own transactions. So, if I am wrong, please guide me.

[jrrsparkles]

I doubt these transactions are like planned one from miners, mining pool owners to self send bitcoins from wallet A to wallet B to fud the market or to spam the mempools and cause a fee race to help miners get more transaction fees.

I don't think so, because they are paying extremely over fee than what is required for just one transaction and if their intention is to increase the fee then they would $30 as fees for 100 TX not just 1 TX with $3000.

Also, the possibility of such fees due to human error is high, when users try to customize their fee over suggested by wallets but it's the days of miners so they will take whatever is coming in their way at the moment.

[Husires]

With the high fees, some services still use pay-to-pubkey-hash (P2PKH), or legacy addresses and the possibility of saving a lot of fees. However, they continue to pay higher fees https://mempool.space/tx/f1628130f54846134bd688cf2e3cee1250d3d28aad767c97987a5b748c1f1c10

Full blocks are a good sign because these transactions are not spam, as most blocks have more than 3,000 transactions, and some have more than 5,000 transactions.

[BenCodie]

https://explorer.btc.com/btc/transaction/5bca3df97f4bd155b75432a7fd2907e4ddc1d6e75452e314a0038de921eb3818
https://explorer.btc.com/btc/transaction/134d1e7ff9b765f4ee59d355d4a365845540a537d78380b0e404b92ae0f53193
https://explorer.btc.com/btc/transaction/36b21256456434d7932930124976916cb47d833f12ed15af34d662aa35336de9

I mean there is the mempool is congested and I want to or have to be in the next block and then there are these.
Bad programming of wallets?
People who don't know better?

I don't think they are errors because of the number of them happening over the last few hours.

Your thoughts?

-Dave

As we watch on this fee saga, the theory that what is happening right now is Miners "benchmarking" the network in preparation for the halving, becomes more and more valid.

These TX's validate this theory further.

What I think is that miners:
- Do not have enough liquidity to adjust the price on-market post-halving as they have clearly done in the past.
- In turn, they are now seeing how to make up the difference in fees, running a series of tests on-chain to be able to see how much activity is needed at what TX cost, to generate enough fees for mining to stay viable
- To achieve this, or to "benchmark" the network, they have to run a series of on-chain tests, varying the network fee with absurd transactions (and probably mining the blocks themselves wherever possible, or collaborating with other pools/miners to reduce the cost).

This is of course, a conspiracy theory to an extent. Someone will need to go on-chain to prove this. However, the theory that the market was manipulated by miners post-halvings to be able to keep mining profitable is also still a theory, we can all see there was truth in this looking back and as we've learnt their influence and power later on.

[ImThour]

Most likely, it's due to Ordinals and more projects coming on that. It's a similar situation to what Ethereum Network faced at the time of NFTs and shitcoins, all about the hype.
The new Taproot Wizards project on Ordinals might be the reason, I could be completely wrong. I see "WITNESS_V1_TAPROOT" in the Input Scripts. Would love how that relates to the TX.