ViaBTC free slots available [1 Jan 2024]

[hosseinimr93]

How do I find out the virtual size or the weight of the transaction? In my electrum client it doesn’t show it, even in the block explorer it doesn’t show the virtual size or weight of the transaction?

The number displayed by electrum as fee rate is in sat/vbyte, although electrum is still showing that in sat/byte.
The size displayed by electrum is also in vbytes, not bytes.

All bitcoin explorers I know display the virtual size of the transactions or their weight. Even some explorers show both of them.


Here is a transaction on blockchair.com.



The fee rate is 247 sat/vbyte and the weight is 449.
The virtual size of the transaction is 449/4 = 112 vbytes.

[1714538758]

1714538758

[1714538758]

1714538758

[1714538758]

1714538758

[1714538758]

1714538758

[1714538758]

1714538758

[1714538758]

1714538758

[Arenga pinnata]

Edit: Now the slots are visible sand available for humans to use. If you want then make use of it.

If you have tried using viabtc accelerator to accelerate your transaction via 100 free quota per hour then it is close to impossible for the past couple of days. So I thought they stopped offering free TX acceleration at first but I couldn't find anywhere that they stopped offering free TX acceleration.

That led me to think what if someone built a bot to abuse their service? or what else it could be?

That is why no one can see the numbers at the refreshing time and it always says the limit is exceeded, and also I would like to know if anyone successfully submitted it in the last two days.

In recent days even if I try to be the fastest in using ViaBTC I still can't. Has ViaBTC really stopped their temporary acceleration?
How to check blocks mined by ViaBTC?
I want to check if they are still taking 100 low fee transactions every hour.

Luckily in recent days costs have dropped slightly. Yesterday the costs stayed between 40 - 60 Sats/vbyte. And this morning it was in the range of 35 - 40 Sats/vbyte so it is still possible for me to make transactions with that fee. But now costs are starting to climb back up from the 66 - 110sats/vbyte range. I think these costs will probably become normal costs eventually. The scariest thing is when the costs are above 200sats.

[God bless u]

Seems viabtc changed order of entering captcha, allowing do it only after start new hours. Earlier was possible to do this in advance.

And they decreased the number of hourly free transactions to 20.

By the order of submission, ViaBTC supports 20 FREE acceleration chances per hour.

Edit:
I visited ViaBTC accelerator at 00:00 (UTC) and there was no remaining hourly free transaction.
I refreshed the page and after the second refresh, I got the following message from cloudflare.

The owner of this website (www.viabtc.com) has banned you temporarily from accessing this website.

that happened to me too in other websites too. I think it is an automatic protection feature. when a website is visited (refreshed) multiple times from the same IP in a short time. that feature triggers and marks your activity as a bot activity and put a temporary ban for visiting that website.
they've probably added that as an effort to exclude as many Oridinal bots as possible. but these scammers will always find their way.
they probably decreased free transactions for the same reason too.

[Potato Chips]

I visited ViaBTC accelerator at 00:00 (UTC) and there was no remaining hourly free transaction.

Tried to push a tx for three hourly resets and same thing happened lol. I also had my watch on my side so pretty sure I hit at 00:00 or 00:01. Interesting thing was, I wasn't even asked to do a captcha... really starting to think that they are temporarily freezing the free slot reset at some times. Good thing the fees aren't as bad as before.

EDIT: last try at another 00:00, same scenario, quota has ran out, no captcha was asked

In recent days even if I try to be the fastest in using ViaBTC I still can't. Has ViaBTC really stopped their temporary acceleration?
How to check blocks mined by ViaBTC?
I want to check if they are still taking 100 low fee transactions every hour.

The free tx acceleration is still ongoing, I believe. I had a successful attempt couple days as well but there are some stuff going on that makes it harder to submit a tx e.g. we believe that bots were abusing the free slots hence they get taken fast.

For your 2nd question, most block explorers should do e.g. https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/blocks?q=guessed_miner(ViaBTC) or https://mempool.space/mining/pool/viabtc

Viabtc has also reduced the free slots to 20 -- this will tighen the competition even more, rip.

By the order of submission, ViaBTC supports 20 FREE acceleration chances per hour.

[Coyster]

Viabtc has also reduced the free slots to 20 -- this will tighen the competition even more, rip.

Bad news, the chances of using viabtc free accelerator right now is slim to none, 100 slots were filled by bots in a wink, now with 20 slots normal humans stand no chance of successfully submitting their transaction ID's. I reckon it is only a matter of time before they offer zero free accelerations, and for one to use their accelerator, you'd have to use the paid service. So many of their blocks contain accelerated transactions that are not paying a high fee in a period when fees are high; and this could be the reason why they have reduced the free slot to 20.

[Cryptoprincess101]

Viabtc has also reduced the free slots to 20 -- this will tighen the competition even more, rip.

Bad news, the chances of using viabtc free accelerator right now is slim to none, 100 slots were filled by bots in a wink, now with 20 slots normal humans stand no chance of successfully submitting their transaction ID's. I reckon it is only a matter of time before they offer zero free accelerations, and for one to use their accelerator, you'd have to use the paid service. So many of their blocks contain accelerated transactions that are not paying a high fee in a period when fees are high; and this could be the reason why they have reduced the free slot to 20.

Actually Viabtc is really hard to successfully accelerate transactions now with this development of only 20 slots like how fast can you be in the next hour to be able to accelerate your transaction for quicker confirmation. Honestly, this is so sad as I wanted to accelerate my transactions Viabtc this evening and I monitored the time so closely but yet I couldn't meet up.

[Marvelman]

Viabtc has also reduced the free slots to 20 -- this will tighen the competition even more, rip.

By the order of submission, ViaBTC supports 20 FREE acceleration chances per hour.

That's really bad news.  I used their free accelerator service on several occasions in the past.
I wonder what prompted them to make such a move? If bots are the problem, why not take some action against them?

[Coyster]

Honestly, this is so sad as I wanted to accelerate my transactions Viabtc this evening and I monitored the time so closely but yet I couldn't meet up.

Viabtc might no longer be an option, and if your transaction is opted to RBF, you prolly should use it and replace your initial transaction with a new one, but this time check the mempool and use a good fee rate. Transaction fees have somewhat dropped, at least it is not as high as it was in previous weeks, so it is better to take this advantage, than waiting, only to see it rise so high again.

If bots are the problem, why not take some action against them?

I don't think the bots are the problem, viabtc prolly wants to reduce the number of transactions they include in their block that pays a low fee rate, especially now that fee rate is high, and with all the backlog they've had in a couple of weeks, i guess it became too much.

[Arenga pinnata]

In recent days even if I try to be the fastest in using ViaBTC I still can't. Has ViaBTC really stopped their temporary acceleration?
How to check blocks mined by ViaBTC?
I want to check if they are still taking 100 low fee transactions every hour.

The free tx acceleration is still ongoing, I believe. I had a successful attempt couple days as well but there are some stuff going on that makes it harder to submit a tx e.g. we believe that bots were abusing the free slots hence they get taken fast.

For your 2nd question, most block explorers should do e.g. https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/blocks?q=guessed_miner(ViaBTC) or https://mempool.space/mining/pool/viabtc

Viabtc has also reduced the free slots to 20 -- this will tighen the competition even more, rip.

By the order of submission, ViaBTC supports 20 FREE acceleration chances per hour.

Thanks for the answer and I have also checked some of the blocks generated by ViaBTC and it looks like the free acceleration is still there. It's just that there are only a few slots available which means they run out more quickly in just a few seconds. Because in the Blocks produced by ViaBTC there are still many transactions with small fees which probably come from free acceleration slots and from paid acceleration slots. But most likely come from paid acceleration services.

When I wrote this the fees were still stable for quite a long time in the range of 35 to 40 sats/vB. I think it will be difficult for fees to fall further than this.

[LoyceV]

If bots are the problem, why not take some action against them?

It may be impossible. Captcha solving services charge a fraction of a cent per captcha. Even if the bot can't solve it, a click farm can, and considering the Ordinal spammers have the budget to pay $40 in fees per transaction, they won't have any problem paying a click farm.

[stompix]

Viabtc has also reduced the free slots to 20 -- this will tighen the competition even more, rip.

By the order of submission, ViaBTC supports 20 FREE acceleration chances per hour.

That's really bad news.  I used their free accelerator service on several occasions in the past.
I wonder what prompted them to make such a move? If bots are the problem, why not take some action against them?

Money!
Viabtc is an open pool, unlike foundry which is closed and basically the same guys that own the farms are running the pool to, so it needs miners to see an incentive to mine there, and if :
-you're dropping transactions for lower paying ones
-you're using some of the blockspace for accelerated transaction with fees that you don't share with miners
some might start moving away or not be that happy about it.
Btc.com just got sold for 5 million while incurring a 2 million loss on operation, I'm sure Viabtc stated to do a bit more math behind free stuff!

[FinneysTrueVision]

Tonight I was able to submit a transaction I had pending for almost a week while there was still a few slots left, but unfortunately I got a message saying 'captcha not right'. I had already solved the captcha correctly so I am not sure why I got that error. I tried to resubmit my transaction while it was showing 7 slots remaining but I was too slow and those spots were gone by the time I clicked the button to submit it.

[stompix]

How times change, it's :04 and still



I assume that's probably because the fee has dropped to 24 and for ViaBTC to work you still need ~20sat/vb so it makes little sense to not pay directly 5 satoshi extra rather than trying your luck every hour, plus that you can't accelerate really big ones where 3-5 sat/vb would make a difference.

[LoyceV]

I assume that's probably because the fee has dropped to 24 and for ViaBTC to work you still need ~20sat/vb so it makes little sense

Even worse, according to mempoo.space 23.2 sat/vbyte is the purging limit. Take a look at Johoe's graph: it looks like the 300 MB mempool is almost completely filled with 23 sat/vbyte transactions, and if you zoom out a bit, you'll see most of them are most likely all created by Ordinal spammers. So you can choose: pay a bit above 23.2 sat/vbyte, or wait weeks.

[stompix]

Even worse, according to mempoo.space 23.2 sat/vbyte is the purging limit. Take a look at Johoe's graph: it looks like the 300 MB mempool is almost completely filled with 23 sat/vbyte transactions, and if you zoom out a bit, you'll see most of them are most likely all created by Ordinal spammers. So you can choose: pay a bit above 23.2 sat/vbyte, or wait weeks.

Well, give Okex and Binance a bit of credit too 

https://blockstream.info/address/16r7U7GqbVPeKukgfd3mUN9LCkuoKbfpXM

UNCONFIRMED TX COUNT   7620

https://blockstream.info/address/bc1qm34lsc65zpw79lxes69zkqmk6ee3ewf0j77s3h

UNCONFIRMED TX COUNT   2179

This block might look suspicious:

But it's actually full of consolidation from okex, the address above, all tx labeled : SegWitTaprootRBF 

Anyhow, if there is no other hype starting, the weekend is going to make mincemeat out of this, I'm always looking at the 10sat/vb and this is now down to 329vMB from almost 400 a week ago.

[LoyceV]

Anyhow, if there is no other hype starting, the weekend is going to make mincemeat out of this, I'm always looking at the 10sat/vb and this is now down to 329vMB from almost 400 a week ago.

So that's -71 vMB in a week? That's the problem indeed: even without new Ordinal spam, the backlog takes forever to clear. Based on your date it'll be a month to start confirming 10 sat/vbyte. We'd need a monthly 1 GB block to clear mempool.

[stompix]

So that's -71 vMB in a week? That's the problem indeed: even without new Ordinal spam, the backlog takes forever to clear. Based on your date it'll be a month to start confirming 10 sat/vbyte.

Statistics, lies, manipulation..deceivement

It depends on the timeline you chose, I've set it for example for 7 days, but you could also cut it from January 22dn when it was at 411vMb so that would be 80vMB in 4 days and those were week days which would then mean less than 16 days till target.

But also, the difficulty adjustment happened on Saturday and since then we're at a

Current Pace:   106.3109%  (921 / 866.33 expected, 54.67 ahead)

so without these extra which would be erased in two week in the new adjustment we would be at only around 16vMB cleared naturally without fastest blocks in 7 days, so 20 weeks? 

We'd need a monthly 1 GB block to clear mempool.

We have a big blocker here, bring the pitchforks!!!!!!!! 

[LoyceV]

We have a big blocker here, bring the pitchforks!!!!!!!!  

I already store many gigabytes of Ordinal spam in my copy of the blockchain
I think I said it in 2017 already: I don't care how Bitcoin scales, as long as it scales. Bitcoin is almost twice as old now, and we're still looking at the same problem: the blockchain can't handle more data.
Makes you wonder what would have happened if blocks were a lot bigger: at very low fees, the Ordinal spammers could have filled hundreds of megabytes per blocks for the price they paid in some months. As a rough estimate, given big enough blocks they could have doubled the current blockchain size just by spamming in the past year. So big blocks aren't really a solution either, although at least it would keep transaction fees low for the rest of us.

[stompix]

I'm always looking at the 10sat/vb and this is now down to 329vMB from almost 400 a week ago
~

So that's -71 vMB in a week? That's the problem indeed: even without new Ordinal spam, the backlog takes forever to clear.

Revisiting this since despite the weekend the 10sat/b wall has gone up to 348vMB, so as I was saying, statistics, they cna come and bite you in the ass as soon as you let your mouth babble about.......and with that and sporadic spikes of over 35sat/b people might stilt take a chance on ViaBTC.

Speaking of Viabtc:
https://mempool.space/block/0000000000000000000027d7dda32229f3e774dafd550278fa3c87a2381ceaaa
This might be a reason for the cut in a free 100tx, in the last block Viabtc paid me I checked and for sure about 50-100 tx were internal payments and moving of coinbase coins, dunno why they do it in splits sometimes but...their business.

[Bitcoin_Arena]

Speaking of Viabtc:
https://mempool.space/block/0000000000000000000027d7dda32229f3e774dafd550278fa3c87a2381ceaaa
This might be a reason for the cut in a free 100tx, in the last block Viabtc paid me I checked and for sure about 50-100 tx were internal payments and moving of coinbase coins, dunno why they do it in splits sometimes but...their business.

I think they were making way less in transaction fees compared to other mining pools, so it was inevitable they would cut down the slots. I even saw some miners complaining about it on Twitter and trying to compare to other mining pools.

Honestly, If I was a Bitcoin miner and was looking to maximize the profits of my mining hardware, I would look for another mining pool