How to determine the right transaction fee?

[DYING_S0UL]

Most of you know that gas transaction fees are inputted automatically when making a transaction, but they can be added manually. A reputed member said, "When someone chooses the gas transaction fee automatically, there are many unnecessary fees included, which could have been reduced or deducted."

As an example, suppose the current fee is set at $1. But based on the memepool congestion, it could have been reduced to $0.90, and the translation would still take the same confirmation time (slightly). I don't know how much of it is true or practical but as far as I understood, he meant this.

Therefore, I could set my own fee as a result of high transaction volumes if I could understand the memepool and congestion. To understand, I meant the math and calculation part, and what's sat/vB? I don't know how that works.

I am not in a hurry. So I won't need instant confirmation. I can wait 6 hours, 12 hours, or even 24 hours for the confirmation. Of course, I won't choose a value that would make the transaction stuck. I know that a high fee equals high priority. But if I could save a couple of pennies, then why not? This question popped inside my mind after someone posted this topic: Someone just paid 83BTC for transaction fee.

[Charles-Tim]

It is not called gas fee. This is not altcoin. It is called transaction fee. Or just call it fee.

Therefore, I could set my own gas fee as a result of high transaction volumes if I could understand the memepool and congestion. To understand, I meant the math and calculation part, and what's sat/vB? I don't know how that works.

Use either

https://mempool.space
Or
https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/

to know the fee rate to be used.

[Solosanz]

Not gas fee instead Bitcoin fee or on chain fee, gas fee is usually refer to altcoins.

Not memepool instead mempool.

What does sats/vB mean and how is the fee calculated?
The transaction fee is always displayed in Sats/vB. This means Satoshi per byte. So if a transaction has e.g. 1300 bytes, the following is calculated with a transaction fee of 50 Sats/vB: 50 * 1300 = 65’000 Satoshis (0.00065000 BTC)

Different type of Bitcoin address, different size of the input and output, also how many input(s) and output(s) are affect the fees you need to pay, you can check in this site https://bitcoinops.org/en/tools/calc-size/

I think mistakenly pay the fees with such huge amount is almost impossible, there's should be a warning for that or the wallet doesn't allow you to send higher than the fast priority.

[Charles-Tim]

I think mistakenly pay the fees with such huge amount is almost impossible, there's should be a warning for that or the wallet doesn't allow you to send higher than the fast priority.

It is possible. It is better to use a reputed wallet that are recommended on this forum. There are two cases recently on the news and that were also discussed on this forum that very higher amount was payed as fee. It is good to know the fee that you used before broadcasting any transaction. Before reputed wallet will broadcast a transaction, the fee paid will first be displayed before you will click on broadcast.

OP, if you want to know more about fee rate, or sat/vbyte calculation, you can read this: Minimizing bitcoin transaction fee

Fee equals to feerate multiply by vbyte

Fee = feerate*vbyte

Vbyte is the virtual byte of the transaction.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

Most of you know that gas fees are inputted automatically when making a transaction, but they can be added manually.

Someone just paid 83BTC for transaction fee.

You see the article is transaction fee and you wrote gas fee, two different terms.

What is gas on blockchain? from smart contract blockchain.
Bitcoin transaction fee

Different type of Bitcoin address, different size of the input and output, also how many input(s) and output(s) are affect the fees you need to pay, you can check in this site https://bitcoinops.org/en/tools/calc-size/

You can use https://jlopp.github.io/bitcoin-transaction-size-calculator/ too. It is built by Jameson Lopp.

[libert19]

Most of you know that gas fees are inputted automatically when making a transaction, but they can be added manually. A reputed member said, "When someone chooses the gas fee automatically, there are many unnecessary fees included, which could have been reduced or deducted."

Idk about 'unnecessary fees' inclusion but wallets usually suggest more than necessary, you'll certainly save some if you use custom option.

If you don't have urgent transaction to make, go with lowest option from whatever site you use to check fees (I personally use https://bitcoinfees.net/ but mempool space is more popular here, as suggested above).

I made transaction recently with 43 sats fee, and waited about 8 hours (not really, slept and woke up  ), paid few dollars fee. That's a lot of savings than whatever is recommended these days ($10-$20). I understand still confirmation time can fluctuate but so far my transactions are confirmed earlier than expected.

[pakhitheboss]

Most of you know that gas fees are inputted automatically when making a transaction, but they can be added manually. A reputed member said, "When someone chooses the gas fee automatically, there are many unnecessary fees included, which could have been reduced or deducted."

What is gas fee? Are you sure you are asking the right question on the right board.

As an example, suppose the current gas fee is set at $1. But based on the memepool congestion, it could have been reduced to $0.90, and the translation would still take the same confirmation time (slightly). I don't know how much of it is true or practical but as far as I understood, he meant this.

Bitcoin does not use gas, it is called a transaction fee, and gas fee is associated with altcoins. If you are using wallets such as Electrum and Mycelium you would be able to edit the transaction fee according to your requirements as to when you want your transaction to get confirmed.

I am not in a hurry. So I won't need instant confirmation. I can wait 6 hours, 12 hours, or even 24 hours for the confirmation. Of course, I won't choose a value that would make the transaction stuck. I know that a high gas fee equals high priority. But if I could save a couple of pennies, then why not?

You can forget about instant confirmation till next year, ordinals and others which I am not in the mood to write will congest the Bitcoin blockchain. The miners are supporting them as they know this is an opportunity that they have before the halving to earn a good amount of satoshi.

BTW, you are promoting a Bitcoin mixer that has been questionable from the day it came into existence here. I should inform you that you should understand Bitcoin before coming up with a topic that I feel is a big dent for a Bitcoin mixer, which does not care who should promote it. I do feel they got some random guy to spam without understanding how a signature campaign works.

[DYING_S0UL]

Not gas fee instead Bitcoin fee or on chain fee, gas fee is usually refer to altcoins. Not memepool instead mempool.

Different type of Bitcoin address, different size of the input and output, also how many input(s) and output(s) are affect the fees you need to pay, you can check in this site https://bitcoinops.org/en/tools/calc-size/

Yes I know, I have used many wrong terms here but you guys understood what I was trying to say, so please ignore the mistakes for now.

I checked the link you provided. I don't understand what's a transaction type is. I see P2PKH, P2WPKH, P2SH 2-of-3 multisig, P2WSH 2-of-3 multisig and lastly P2TR (taproot).

OP, if you want to know more about fee rate, or sat/vbyte calculation, you can read this: Minimizing bitcoin transaction fee

This is exactly the thing I needed. Massive content though, it'll take some days to fully understand this stuff. Thanks anyway.

You can use https://jlopp.github.io/bitcoin-transaction-size-calculator/ too. It is built by Jameson Lopp.

Same confusion as before, "Input script type".

I made transaction recently with 43 sats fee, and waited about 8 hours (not really, slept and woke up  ), paid few dollars fee. That's a lot of savings than whatever is recommended these days ($10-$20). I understand still confirmation time can fluctuate but so far my transactions are confirmed earlier than expected.

This is the same perspective I was thinking. Saving a couple of bucks won't harm anybody. And as for me, if I could save even $5, that's a big amount for me. Imagine how much one would save after a year.

BTW, you are promoting a Bitcoin mixer that has been questionable from the day it came into existence here. I should inform you that you should understand Bitcoin before coming up with a topic that I feel is a big dent for a Bitcoin mixer, which does not care who should promote it. I do feel they got some random guy to spam without understanding how a signature campaign works.

I am only promoting them because of GazetaBitcoin…I don't know them but I know GazetaBitcoin and I trust him and his judgment. He is not some fool, you should know better. You could say I am a random guy but he isn't. And before joining the campaign, I talked with GazetaBitcoin personally about this. I am aware of the questions that were made against this mixer. People promoted Sinbad for more than 50+ weeks and nobody questioned them but only after the accusations were made and caught, everyone started talking.

But let's not derail the topic please. Was the tag really necessary?

[348Judah]

Most of you know that gas fees are inputted automatically when making a transaction, but they can be added manually. A reputed member said, "When someone chooses the gas fee automatically, there are many unnecessary fees included, which could have been reduced or deducted."

To make it easy and simple, in bitcoin network, we don't make use of gas fee, we use transaction fee, you can adjust your fee rate base on the kind of wallet you're using, you can't be sending from a centralized exchange and expect to make an adjustment on that, secondly, when using wallets like Electrum, you can do that, you will know much much you're going to be charged and can be able to make adjustments on that, but you must first Consult to see how the mempool is to get the best result of doing that, there are no additional charges aside the one shown from the transaction except you make use of RBF to pump the fee.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

mempool.space is what I've always used when calculating transaction fee for bitcoin transfers from my wallet to another wallet or an exchange, on mempool, you will get full information on amount of sats per vbyte and their corresponding value in dollars depending on bitcoin's exchange rate at the time.

And to make things a bit easier for you as a user, you have to chose a wallet that gives you a lot of options to chose from, like for example, I myself use mycelium wallet, it's one of the best bitcoin mobile wallet after Electrum and others, on mycelium, you will find alot of transaction fee options and how much time it will take before you get a confirmation attached to them all, this sometimes even saves you time from going to mempool, as those fee options are concurrently or live updates based on the mempool status of bitcoin.

[pakhitheboss]

BTW, you are promoting a Bitcoin mixer that has been questionable from the day it came into existence here. I should inform you that you should understand Bitcoin before coming up with a topic that I feel is a big dent for a Bitcoin mixer, which does not care who should promote it. I do feel they got some random guy to spam without understanding how a signature campaign works.

I am only promoting them because of GazetaBitcoin…I don't know them but I know GazetaBitcoin and I trust him and his judgment. He is not some fool, you should know better. You could say I am a random guy but he isn't. And before joining the campaign, I talked with GazetaBitcoin personally about this. I am aware of the questions that were made against this mixer. People promoted Sinbad for more than 50+ weeks and nobody questioned them but only after the accusations were made and caught, everyone started talking.

Left you neutral feedback only because you don't have a simple understanding between the Bitcoin transaction fee and the Ethereum gas fee.

I don't know them but I know GazetaBitcoin and I trust him and his judgment. He is not some fool, you should know better. You could say I am a random guy but he isn't.

That is not my concern if someone is promoting a Bitcoin mixer campaign they should know about the product as in Bitcoin. If you had posted this topic with the right word for transaction fees then I wouldn't have questioned you. Coming up with excuses won't matter now and next time don't hide behind a legendary name for your falt.

[Charles-Tim]

And to make things a bit easier for you as a user, you have to chose a wallet that gives you a lot of options to chose from, like for example, I myself use mycelium wallet, it's one of the best bitcoin mobile wallet after Electrum and others, on mycelium, you will find alot of transaction fee options and how much time it will take before you get a confirmation attached to them all, this sometimes even saves you time from going to mempool, as those fee options are concurrently or live updates based on the mempool status of bitcoin.

The best is to check the mempool or a site that is proving the mempool service like the ones that I have mentioned above. It is not good to only check the fee estimated by the wallet. Mycelium is not supporting replace-by-fee, the reason I can not use the wallet. There are better mobile wallets, the three that I use are Electrum, Bluewallet and Samourai.

[DYING_S0UL]

Left you neutral feedback only because you don't have a simple understanding between the Bitcoin transaction fee and the Ethereum gas fee.

Edited the topic, but I guess it's up to you if you remove the tag or not...

[hosseinimr93]

As an example, suppose the current gas fee is set at $1. But based on the memepool congestion, it could have been reduced to $0.90, and the translation would still take the same confirmation time (slightly).

We don't set the transaction fee in dollars. We set the fee rate which is in sat/vbyte and that's what miners prioritize transactions based on.
The total fee you pay for a bitcoin transaction equals to fee rate (in sat/vbyte) * virtual size of the transaction (in vbyte).

Miners include up to 1 vMB of transactions in each block.
Assume that there are 0.5 vMB of transactions with the fee rate of 100 sat/vbyte. If you set the fee rate to 100 sat/vbyte, your transaction will be likely confirmed in the next block. If you set the fee rate to 150 sat/vbyte, you waste your money.

For fee estimation, I always use jochen-hoenicke website. The tool allows me to analyze the mempool by myself.

I checked the link you provided. I don't understand what's a transaction type is. I see P2PKH, P2WPKH, P2SH 2-of-3 multisig, P2WSH 2-of-3 multisig and lastly P2TR (taproot).

They refer to different address types.
For example, With using segwit addresses instead of legacy addresses, you can decrease the (virtual) size of your transaction and pay less fee.

Left you neutral feedback only because you don't have a simple understanding between the Bitcoin transaction fee and the Ethereum gas fee.

That's not the correct use of trust system.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

And to make things a bit easier for you as a user, you have to chose a wallet that gives you a lot of options to chose from, like for example, I myself use mycelium wallet, it's one of the best bitcoin mobile wallet after Electrum and others, on mycelium, you will find alot of transaction fee options and how much time it will take before you get a confirmation attached to them all, this sometimes even saves you time from going to mempool, as those fee options are concurrently or live updates based on the mempool status of bitcoin.

The best is to check the mempool or a site that is proving the mempool service like the ones that I have mentioned above. It is not good to only check the fee estimated by the wallet. Mycelium is not supporting replace-by-fee, the reason I can not use the wallet. There are better mobile wallets, the three that I use are Electrum, Bluewallet and Samourai.

Well, you did notice I said "mycelium is one of the best bitcoin mobile wallet AFTER Electrum and others", which should tell anyone reading that I do know that Electrum is better than mycelium, but for me, I do believe that mycelium is just enjoying a first mover advantage on me  ,  I first started using mycelium before I discovered Electrum, and I don't know, I just don't like switching wallets for no particular or just reason, since I've been using mycelium for more than 5 to 6 years now, I've never had a bitcoin transaction stuck for more than a day, so, ive really not seen their lack of "replace-by-fee" feature as a enough reason to stop using the wallet.

But anyways, I definitely may switch to Electrum by next year, since I plan to get a new mobile phone by then, a more powerful one 😁.

[Churchillvv]

Not gas fee instead Bitcoin fee or on chain fee, gas fee is usually refer to altcoins. Not memepool instead mempool.

Different type of Bitcoin address, different size of the input and output, also how many input(s) and output(s) are affect the fees you need to pay, you can check in this site https://bitcoinops.org/en/tools/calc-size/

Yes I know, I have used many wrong terms here but you guys understood what I was trying to say, so please ignore the mistakes for now.

I checked the link you provided. I don't understand what's a transaction type is. I see P2PKH, P2WPKH, P2SH 2-of-3 multisig, P2WSH 2-of-3 multisig and lastly P2TR (taproot).

They are Bitcoin transaction types here are the meanings;

Simplified explanation of transaction types for beginners.

P2PKH: "Pay To Public Key Hash" - This is how a big percentage of transactions are made. You are requiring the sender to supply a valid signature (from the private key) and public key. The transaction output script will use the signature and public key after checking the hash of the provided public key with previous output, and through some cryptographic functions will check if the signature is valid, if it was, then the funds will be spendable. This method conceals your public key in the form of a hash for extra security. If the spending condition is set to present a public key hash, then it is a P2PKH TX, and you have the std Op_Dup, Op_Hash160,... structure.

P2PK: "Pay To Public Key" - Unlike P2PKH that contained the hash of public key; this script contains the public key itself. Anyone using this method to send funds over the P2P network is showing people their public key in the transaction details. The spending condition only requires you to present your public key and signature. The public key would be recognized by your wallet (following the above mentioned coding scheme) as „type 1“ address.

P2SH: "Pay To Script Hash" - became a standard script in April 2012. The outputs of a transaction are just hash of scripts known as redeemscript that, if are executed with specific parameters, will result in a boolean of true or false. If a miner runs the output script with the supplied parameters and results in true, the money will be sent to your desired output. P2SH is used for multi-signature wallets making the output scripts logic that checks for multiple signatures before accepting the transaction. P2SH can also be used to allow anyone, or no one, to spend the funds. If the output script of a P2SH transaction is just 1 for true, then attempting to spend the output without supplying parameters will just result in 1 making the money spendable by anyone who tries. This also applies to scripts that return 0, making the output spendable by no one.

P2WPKH: "Pay To Witness Public Key Hash" - This was a feature of segwit which stands for Segregated Witness. Instead of using scriptSig parameters to check the transaction validity, there is a new part of the transaction called witness where the validity occurs. In 2015, Pieter Wuille introduced a new feature to bitcoin called Segregated Witness, also known by its abbreviated name, Segwit. Basically, Segregated Witness moves the proof of ownership from the scriptSig part of the transaction to a new part called the witness of the input.

P2MS: "MultiSignature" - (multisig) refers to requiring more than one key to authorize a Bitcoin transaction and was first applied to Bitcoin addresses in 2013. Generally used to divide up responsibility for possession of bitcoins. Standard transactions on the Bitcoin network could be called “single-signature transactions,” because transfers require only one signature — from the owner of the private key associated with the Bitcoin address. However, the Bitcoin network supports much more complicated transactions that require the signatures of multiple people before the funds can be transferred. These are often referred to as M-of-N transactions. The idea is that Bitcoins become “encumbered” by providing addresses of multiple parties, thus requiring cooperation of those parties in order to do anything with them. These parties can be people, institutions or programmed scripts. Became a standard script in January 2012.

NULL DATA: (OP_RETURN) - transaction type relayed and mined by default in Bitcoin Core 0.9.0 and later that adds arbitrary data to a provably unspendable pubkey script that full nodes don’t have to store in their UTXO database. Anyone can use a NULL DATA script to add some arbitrary data to a transaction, so you can find them scattered around the blockchain. We have to remember that not all miners accept transactions with null-data and not all nodes relay them. (OP_RETURN) outputsLook for empty outputs when browsing the blockchain, as NULL DATA scripts are almost always placed on empty outputs (because the outputs are made unspendable by the lock).
Here is a web page with a list of metadata recently embedded in the bitcoin blockchain using OP_RETURN outputs: http://coinsecrets.org/

Non-Standart - to include this type of transaction to the Bitcoin Blockchain, an agreement has to be reached with a miner: the non-standard transaction will be then included in the blockchain when the miner resolves the block. Depends on the hash rate from the miner it can be quite a while taking into consideration very high actual difficulty which is rising constantly from the start of Bitcoin. Of course, miner will take a proper fee for the non-standard transaction.

If you take your time to read through the source of the quote you will understand better on Bitcoin transactions types

[moneystery]

and because of that i always use mempool.space to be able to see which transaction fees are most suitable for me. because sometimes when i set fees automatically from the application, the application recommends fees that are more expensive than what is recommended by mempool.space and i don't understand why that happens, sometimes i can even get a few dollars difference from mempool.space. so now every time i want to make a transaction, i first look at mempool.space to see how many transaction fees are recommended and then set it manually.

[GazetaBitcoin]

I'm not taking sides here, just wanted to clarify some aspects:

BTW, you are promoting a Bitcoin mixer that has been questionable from the day it came into existence here.

In case you are not aware, PureMixerio proved already their reserves with the help of reputable forum users, such as LoyceV and icopress -- link 1, link 2.

I do feel they got some random guy to spam without understanding how a signature campaign works.

DS is not enrolled in any signature campaign. PureMixerio does not have any signature campaign running.

Left you neutral feedback only because you don't have a simple understanding between the Bitcoin transaction fee and the Ethereum gas fee.

Then this part of the feedback you left to DS is irrelevant: "Promoting a Signature Campaign which is for Bitcoin mixer.". Right? The problem is that DS does not know how fees work, which is correctly reflected in the second part of your feedback ("Does not understand how Bitcoin transaction fee works."). Therefore I don't understand the usefulness of first part of the feedback.

I am only promoting them because of GazetaBitcoin

Just to make sure there is not any misunderstanding here: DS wears his current signature based on his own decision, not because I coerced him somehow to do that. If the fact that I am wearing this signature influenced him to do the same thing, it was a decision taken by him, not by anyone else.

[Z-tight]

and because of that i always use mempool.space to be able to see which transaction fees are most suitable for me. because sometimes when i set fees automatically from the application, the application recommends fees that are more expensive than what is recommended by mempool.space and i don't understand why that happens, sometimes i can even get a few dollars difference from mempool.space. so now every time i want to make a transaction, i first look at mempool.space to see how many transaction fees are recommended and then set it manually.

That is the right thing to do, some wallet's software are really bad at estimating tx fees, so it is always necessary to check mempool.space before broadcasting your tx, so you can set the fee rate of your choice.

In addition, this is part of the reason why using a good self custodial wallet is so important, one in which you can customize fees yourself. in a custodial wallet, the service handles withdrawals after collecting a withdrawal fee, sometimes they might end up broadcasting the tx with a very low fee rate and it would be stucked. There have been a few newbies complaining about this issue when they used cash app for their tx.

[LoyceV]

BTW, you are promoting a Bitcoin mixer that has been questionable from the day it came into existence here.

In case you are not aware, PureMixerio proved already their reserves with the help of reputable forum users, such as LoyceV and icopress -- link 1, link 2.

Don't mistake my confirmation of a signed message for trusting them. For the record: I don't trust them at all:

This user lies, and I don't trust him. I think this is an exit scam waiting to happen, and I advise anyone not to trust their website.