Electrum unable to increase fee or cancel

[Grayson77]

Hi,

I'm a bit of a noob when it comes to cryptocurrency, but thus far I've had no issues doing small transactions using my electrum wallet.
Recently however something seems to  have gone wrong. I made 2 transactions in a short timeframe without waiting for the first one to be confirmed. This made me spent unconfirmed coins and from my understanding the second transaction (child) can't be confirmed until the parent has been confirmed first. This shouldn't be an issue normally, but this is where the problem comes in.

The parent transaction has not been confirmed, however I've actually received the product that I've payed for, is this possible?
I've waited 48 hours to see if it would confirm, but nothing changed. I've tried to increase the fee multiple times to no avail. I'm not able to cancel the transaction either. I keep getting this message :

The server returned an error when broadcasting the transaction.
Consider trying to connect to a different server, or updating Electrum.

insufficient fee
Your transaction is trying to replace another one in the mempool but it does not meet the rules to do so. Try to increase the fee.

Below are images of my wallet and the block explorer page.

These are the TXid's :

Parent : e7d7cc81108548e9e1ea29407b63491530dd411033c8617b99ecf57aa53d79a1
Child : 5bd1fc55edbfaee5157c7954ac9137b86498c64a8d55232c54ff907e22db960a


https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/06/12/cLOu1.png
https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/06/12/cLqxJ.png

Any help would be appreciated!

[hosseinimr93]

You have already increased the fee of the second transaction (child) 5 times and the effective fee rate is now 23.1 sat/vbyte.
If you want your transactions to be confirmed faster, you can increase the fee rate of the second transaction more.

Take note that if increase the fee rate of first transaction (parent), you would replace that with a new one and you would invalidate the second transaction (child).
The error you get when increasing the fee rate of the first transaction is because you need to increase the fee rate more. According to BIP125 rules, the fee you pay for the replacement transaction must be higher than the total fee of the transactions that would be removed from the mempool after the replacement.

[Zaguru12]

The parent transaction has not been confirmed, however I've actually received the product that I've payed for, is this possible?
I've waited 48 hours to see if it would confirm, but nothing changed. I've tried to increase the fee multiple times to no avail. I'm not able to cancel the transaction either. I keep getting this message :

The server returned an error when broadcasting the transaction.
Consider trying to connect to a different server, or updating Electrum.

insufficient fee
Your transaction is trying to replace another one in the mempool but it does not meet the rules to do so. Try to increase the fee.

Yes the parent transaction must be confirmed first before the child transaction, the effective fee rate of 23sats/vbyte is like the medium priority fee now and you might need to wait a little bit for the fee rate to come down lower that’s the mempool gets less congested and both will be confirmed. The last 48 hours haven’t had the mempool congestion reduce to make miners pick your transaction.

The one thing I don’t get is who was the parent transaction sent to, it was definitely to a wallet you control that’s why you were able to do a CPFP, maybe the child transaction is to the sellers address. Maybe the seller isn’t aware that the transaction hasn’t been confirmed and the release the product, there is nothing to worry about just allow the transaction to go through.

Yes the insufficient funds error when canceling the transaction was as a result of no bitcoins left in the wallet to be used as transaction fee for the cancellation. Cancellation is simply resending the transaction back to the same address with a higher fee. More like an RBF and it also requires transaction fee in fact higher than the current transaction fee you set.

[hosseinimr93]

Yes the insufficient funds error when canceling the transaction was as a result of no bitcoins left in the wallet to be used as transaction fee for the cancellation.

No. OP had enough fund to make the replacement transaction.
Take note OP got the error from the server, not from electrum GUI. This means that the transaction didn't meet the server policy rules and that was why the node didn't broadcast the transaction.

For replacing the first transaction, nodes have to remove the second transaction from their mempool too. Nodes accept to do so, only if the fee paid for the replacement transaction is higher than the total fee paid for the transactions that are removed from their mempool after the replacement.
OP has enough fund and can replace the first transaction with paying more fee.

[Grayson77]

The error you get when increasing the fee rate of the first transaction is because you need to increase the fee rate more. According to BIP125 rules, the fee you pay for the replacement transaction must be higher than the total fee of the transactions that would be removed from the mempool after the replacement.

This worked. I had to indeed increase the fee to exceed the sum of both fees. This has now cancelled the Child transaction and now I assume I have to wait for the first transaction to confirm. It's sitting at 50.2 sat/vb, which should be enough I hope.

Thanks for the help!

[Husna QA]

The server returned an error when broadcasting the transaction.
Consider trying to connect to a different server, or updating Electrum.

If your network settings on Electrum* use the 'select server automatically' option, try changing to manual by selecting one from the list of available servers. Vice versa, if the previous server selection was manual, try changing to the automatic option.

* Tools -> Network -> Overview

insufficient fee
Your transaction is trying to replace another one in the mempool but it does not meet the rules to do so. Try to increase the fee.

There are 'Preserve Payment' and 'Decrease Payment' options for Increasing fees.
Try using one of them to process the bump fee on the parent transaction first.

* Qt: The increase fee dialog now has advanced options, and offers
   the choice between different RBF strategies.

-Edit-

This worked. I had to indeed increase the fee to exceed the sum of both fees. This has now cancelled the Child transaction and now I assume I have to wait for the first transaction to confirm. It's sitting at 50.2 sat/vb, which should be enough I hope.

I think 50.2 sat/vB is more than enough, considering the current fee rate is below that.

[hosseinimr93]

This worked. I had to indeed increase the fee to exceed the sum of both fees. This has now cancelled the Child transaction and now I assume I have to wait for the first transaction to confirm.

You don't have to wait and you can make a new transaction just now.

It's sitting at 50.2 sat/vb, which should be enough I hope.

That's more than enough.
Now, around 30 sat/vbyte is enough for getting confirmation and your transaction will be likely confirmed in the next block.

It may worth mentioning that blocks are mined at the rate of 1 per ~ 10 minutes on average.