why are mining fees not refunded

[Btcdeybodi]

I made a transaction about four days ago, I used 10. sat/vbyte but since then the transaction have been without confirmation so yesterday I decided to cancel the transaction hoping that the principal amount I wanted to send out and the mining fee will be returned together but to my surprise the mining fee was not refunded even when the transaction was not mined because there was no confirmation.

Why was the transaction fee not refunded?

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[Charles-Tim]

If you cancel a bitcoin transaction, not that you actually cancel it. You only increase the fee so that the coin can be sent with higher fee to another of your wallet address.

Next time, just use pump fee/increase the fee instead if you are still willing to send the coin to the receiving address.

[Mia Chloe]

In addition to what Charles-Tim said, the transaction fees act as a form of payment for the block space your transaction occupies on the Bitcoin blockchain. so saying your transaction fees should be refunded means you are indirectly saying that every node should purge your transaction from the block chain. And that would have been possible if you had made use of a fee below 6sat/byte. Probably only the node network of the wallet you used would have broadcasted it while other node will simply just purge it because of the extremely low fees.

[Zaguru12]

In addition to what Charles-Tim said, the transaction fees act as a form of payment for the block space your transaction occupies on the Bitcoin blockchain. so saying your transaction fees should be refunded means you are indirectly saying that every node should purge your transaction from the block chain. And that would have been possible if you had made use of a fee below 6sat/byte. Probably only the node network of the wallet you used would have broadcasted it while other node will simply just purge it because of the extremely low fees.

This is not true, the block doesn’t need your transaction fee for it to have it stored there, so also is the blockchain. The only thing needed by the bitcoin network which is handled by the nodes is that your transaction should just meet the requirements like it hasn’t been spend before, that’s what nodes verify your transaction for.

The transaction fee is just an incentive to the miner to include your transaction into their block other than other transactions since they are junk of them and that’s why you see miners prioritizing transactions based on fees. This has nothing to do with the transaction been included into a block. A transaction without transaction fee can also be included into a block and consequently to the blockchain

[Mia Chloe]

In addition to what Charles-Tim said, the transaction fees act as a form of payment for the block space your transaction occupies on the Bitcoin blockchain. so saying your transaction fees should be refunded means you are indirectly saying that every node should purge your transaction from the block chain. And that would have been possible if you had made use of a fee below 6sat/byte. Probably only the node network of the wallet you used would have broadcasted it while other node will simply just purge it because of the extremely low fees.

This is not true, the block doesn’t need your transaction fee for it to have it stored there, so also is the blockchain. The only thing needed by the bitcoin network which is handled by the nodes is that your transaction should just meet the requirements like it hasn’t been spend before, that’s what nodes verify your transaction for.

The transaction fee is just an incentive to the miner to include your transaction into their block other than other transactions since they are junk of them and that’s why you see miners prioritizing transactions based on fees. This has nothing to do with the transaction been included into a block. A transaction without transaction fee can also be included into a block and consequently to the blockchain

So if you broadcast a transaction with a very low fee, that it is purged, what then happens to the fees since no miner included it in a block?

[Charles-Tim]

so saying your transaction fees should be refunded means you are indirectly saying that every node should purge your transaction from the block chain. And that would have been possible if you had made use of a fee below 6sat/byte. Probably only the node network of the wallet you used would have broadcasted it while other node will simply just purge it because of the extremely low fees.

Let us say the purging is 2.91 sat/vbyte right now. If the server of the wallet that you used set the purging to be less than usual, and you used a fee of 2.5, the server that the wallet used may make the transaction to be broadcasted successfully. But if it is by default and it is 2.91 sat/vbyte as it is Right now, any transaction with the fee rate below that will not be broadcasted by the server of the wallet used.

Also know that if the server has already broadcasted the transaction and later the server dropped the transaction in a way that the sender can spend the coins again in another transaction, if the sender decided not to spend the coin again, the sender should not be surprised if the transaction he thought to have been dropped later got confirmed because the unconfirmed transaction has been sent to other nodes and some nodes have different settings.

So if you want a transaction to be sent back to you, it is better you use RBF to cancel the transaction to send the coin to the address that you own.

transaction with a very low fee, that it is purged, what then happens to the fees since no miner included it in a block?

If a transaction is dropped from mempool, the fee will also be dropped because there is no transaction at all as the transaction dropped from mempool.

Just regard node and server as the same in my reply.

[Doan9269]

In addition to all that has been said, from my own experience too, when i tried to use the feature of cancel transaction on the electrum wallet, i discovered that the transaction was not being broadcasted, which means you're yet to send the transaction and the ugliest aspect was the increase in the fee rate to cancel the transaction which i cant afford to bear than to just go by pumping the transaction to higher fee affordable enough, you cant imagine that it cost 4 USD for instance to cancel a transaction and 1 USD to pump it, which is more preferable, then i realized that the transaction was not sent initially, therefore, no transaction sent and confirmed can be cancelled.

[Catenaccio]

Why was the transaction fee not refunded?

Bitcoin network is Proof of Work and Miners have their roles to find blocks, confirm transactions from Bitcoin users. Finding blocks, confirming transactions are works of miners and they receive bitcoins for their works.

So, is it logic to require Bitcoin miners to refund transaction fee to Bitcoin users?

[Charles-Tim]

you cant imagine that it cost 4 USD for instance to cancel a transaction and 1 USD to pump it, which is more preferable, then i realized that the transaction was not sent initially, therefore, no transaction sent and confirmed can be cancelled.

Both bump fee and cancel transaction are almost the same thing as you double spend the transaction. In both, you have the second (child transaction). The child transaction weight or virtual byte will determine how higher the fee can increase more.

Let us imaging that they are of the same addresses. Either cancel transaction is of the same fee as bump fee or of lower fee or vice versa. It can be of lower fee if you are sending the coin to many addresses, but instead send it back to one address if you want to cancel the transaction to just one address. So I can say that both are of the same fee but it depends on the child transaction vbyte or weight that will determine how higher the total fee to be paid would be.

[Zaguru12]

So if you broadcast a transaction with a very low fee, that it is purged, what then happens to the fees since no miner included it in a block?

The whole transaction remains in your wallet with the fee too, which means no miner actually pick your transaction and included in their mined block and as such they can’t also get the fees you included in it because no work was done by them to claim your incentives.

What I meant about you been wrong is that you said the blockchain needed the fees to add your transactions and that’s not true as it doesn’t. A transaction without fee can still get confirmed if the miner decides to pick it. For example you can be a miner and I will just send my transaction details for you to pick it and add it to your next mining block without having to include any transaction fee.

The only thing to be clear off is that no wallet currently allows broadcasting of transactions without fees, if not it’s not a network protocol that you must add fees to transactions.

[Charles-Tim]

The only thing to be clear off is that no wallet currently allows broadcasting of transactions without fees, if not it’s not a network protocol that you must add fees to transactions.

You can do that on full client wallets like Bitcoin Core if you run your own node.

[pakhitheboss]

I made a transaction about four days ago, I used 10. sat/vbyte but since then the transaction have been without confirmation so yesterday I decided to cancel the transaction hoping that the principal amount I wanted to send out and the mining fee will be returned together but to my surprise the mining fee was not refunded even when the transaction was not mined because there was no confirmation.

Why was the transaction fee not refunded?

Bitcoin is not a bank, when. you cancel a transaction through a bank it refunds the fee and the transaction. However, there is a small cancellation fee involved which is not small if you consider how banks make money only with fees. Cancellation of a transaction on Bitcoin is not allowed but you can still do it if you are using the right wallet. The cancellation of the transaction is nothing but replace-by-fee, which means you pay another fee to replace your transaction. An alternate option would be to increase the fee which I think you cannot do as you are sending the maximum amount that you have in your wallet. Always keep a backup of satoshi as the Bitcoin transaction fee is more volatile than Bitcoin.

[Kristiyana]

I made a transaction about four days ago, I used 10. sat/vbyte but since then the transaction have been without confirmation so yesterday I decided to cancel the transaction hoping that the principal amount I wanted to send out and the mining fee will be returned together but to my surprise the mining fee was not refunded even when the transaction was not mined because there was no confirmation.

Why was the transaction fee not refunded?

I'm also wondering why they didn't refund the transaction fee,since the transaction you initiated was not successful they are suppose to refund your money back both the transaction fee. Had it been it was bank I'm pretty sure that they would have refund your money back to you with the transaction fee, that is one advantage of using Bank. However in bitcoin I don't think if you're allowed to cancel the  transaction that has already been initiated,even if you succeeded in the cancellation they will still charge you for making attempt,that is why they didn't refund the transaction fee.

[hosseinimr93]

An alternate option would be to increase the fee which I think you cannot do as you are sending the maximum amount that you have in your wallet.

You don't have to pay the extra fee from your wallet. You can decrease the payment amount to cover the extra fee.

However in bitcoin I don't think if you're allowed to cancel the  transaction that has already been initiated,even if you succeeded in the cancellation they will still charge you for making attempt,that is why they didn't refund the transaction fee.

The fee you pay for cancelling a transaction is not for the attempt.
As already said in this thread, for cancelling a payment, you have to replace your transaction with a new one paying higher fee sending the fund to yourself. The fee you pay is for the replacement transaction.

[Yamane_Keto]

you cant imagine that it cost 4 USD for instance to cancel a transaction and 1 USD to pump it, which is more preferable, then i realized that the transaction was not sent initially, therefore, no transaction sent and confirmed can be cancelled.

Canceling a transaction always requires higher fees than pumping it.

In canceling a transaction, you change the output transactions to one of your wallet addresses, and you need to guarantee that the new transaction will be included in the next block to cancel the old transaction. Therefore, the fees must be higher than the previous transaction, while in the case of pumping old transaction. It does not matter whether the transaction is confirmed before or after pumping.

[hosseinimr93]

Canceling a transaction always requires higher fees than pumping it.

No. You are wrong.
When you replace a transaction with a new one, you must pay the higher fee for the replacement transaction and it doesn't matter you send the fund to the same address as the original transaction or you change the receiving address to your own address.

[Yamane_Keto]

No. You are wrong.
When you replace a transaction with a new one, you must pay the higher fee for the replacement transaction and it doesn't matter you send the fund to the same address as the original transaction or you change the receiving address to your own address.

Cancel and pump are newbie-friendly terms that describe how double spending will be handled, so from a beginner’s perspective, when sending to the wrong address or is exposed to scam, “cancel transaction” will return coins and therefore should have higher priority than “pumping transaction,” which means you increased the fee but may not be enough to confirm the transaction.
Since we are in a free market, the priority for confirming transactions is with the highest fees. Therefore, in terms of terminology, canceling the transaction must have a higher fee to ensure it will be included in the next block.

But in terms of “double spending” or how to process it, what you say is correct.

[hosseinimr93]

Since we are in a free market, the priority for confirming transactions is with the highest fees. Therefore, in terms of terminology, canceling the transaction must have a higher fee to ensure it will be included in the next block.

No. That's not a must.
If a transaction has been flagged as RBF and you replace is with a new one paying higher fee, almost all nodes will remove the original transaction from their mempool and it will the replacement transaction that will be included in the blockchain.

If you want your replacement transaction to be confirmed in the next block, you can pay a high fee rate so that it will be included in the next block, but that's not required if you are not in a hurry.
You can replace the original transaction with a new one and wait until the replacement transaction is confirmed.

[Zaguru12]

Cancel and pump are newbie-friendly terms that describe how double spending will be handled, so from a beginner’s perspective, when sending to the wrong address or is exposed to scam, “cancel transaction” will return coins and therefore should have higher priority than “pumping transaction,” which means you increased the fee but may not be enough to confirm the transaction.
Since we are in a free market, the priority for confirming transactions is with the highest fees. Therefore, in terms of terminology, canceling the transaction must have a higher fee to ensure it will be included in the next block.

But in terms of “double spending” or how to process it, what you say is correct.

Just look at cancelling transaction as an RBF order, and In an RBF method although some wallets will suggest you to increase your fees it is not a must to have the fees be a high priority one you can simply set the fees and you will wait. Your fear of the former transaction been approved is not there because nodes will have removed that transaction from their mempool and input the new one. The only time where I think you need to set a higher fee as must for it to confirm early is when the transaction wasn’t even RBF enabled at first and you have fears that some nodes who aren’t full RBF enable might still hold on to the old transaction ( which currently I think is rare)

[hosseinimr93]

The only time where I think you need to set a higher fee as must for it to confirm early is when the transaction wasn’t even RBF enabled at first and you have fears that some nodes who aren’t full RBF enable might still hold on to the old transaction ( which currently I think is rare)

Right. I would also do so, if the original transaction has not been flagged as RBF and I want to increase the chance of the second transaction being confirmed.
I don't have access to any data, but I don't think nodes that have not enabled full RBF yet are rare.