Why can a Bitcoin transaction stay unconfirmed even with a higher fee?

[hugeblack]

The problem is that the invoice has expiration time also which can be 10 minutes. If the transaction is not confirmed on time, the 10 minute expiration time can be over or the person will still be credited for the payment?

10-minute average applies to the detection of a transaction rather than its confirmation.
although the network aims to maintain this 10-minute average, the next block is often mined after a longer interval. Consequently, regardless of how high the transaction fee is, a single confirmation cannot be obtained until a new block is mined.

[Karl_3000]

1. Only a novice would rely on the wallet's recommendation; though it's often cool, you might overpay if you don't take care to protect yourself. I check mine manually via the mempool.

You can check it with different Bitcoin mempool sites, more careful than checking with only one site.

What are you saying? If someone use mempool to check the transaction, do you not know what that means? It means the person is running a node and use the mempool of the node to check for transaction. Mempool is just one, no other information will be different on each nodes mempool regarding fee needed.

Right but now wallets no longer use On / Off for RBF in wallet customization interface, so Bitcoin senders with self custodial wallets will mostly use RBF by default settings for their transactions.

Have you used all bitcoin wallets or you just make this conclusion because you use Electrum wallet or using wallets that works that way? There are some things that you do not have to make conclusion and this is one of them.

[KingsDen]

It also just leaves me wondering about what other users do to deal with this. How often do you rely on the wallet for the fee recommendation. Or look into the fee market and mempool? Do you typically use RBF to offer a higher fee for transactions if they take longer to become confirmed or do you just wait for a transaction to get confirmed?

I rely so much on the wallet recommendation. I do not bother setting the fee myself unless there's a serious network congestion such as when we had dust attack. When you follow the wallet recommended fee, you'll likely not get stocked because the nature of the chain is already put into consideration before the fee recommendation.

1. Only a novice would rely on the wallet's recommendation; though it's often cool, you might overpay if you don't take care to protect yourself. I check mine manually via the mempool.

I do not totally agree. Some persons don't want stress and they do not transact so often or handle heavy transaction. What's so bad if one pays just a little more sats that sometimes is insignificant. Most times it's the convenience that's considered and not the sats.

[Lucius]

Previously. I believed that if you pay a higher fee on the transaction to Bitcoin it was almost certain that it would be confirmed quickly, but it's not this simple.
~snip~

As one member already mentioned, you can pay a fee 100 times higher than recommended, but you will still have to wait for a miner to mine the next block. Everyone has surely experienced waiting more than 60 minutes for the next block, and to make matters worse, some services require two or three confirmations - this means the process can sometimes take a very long time, leading people to wonder if they made a mistake, even though no one is actually at fault.

For those who don't want to have such problems, I recommend that they try Lightning Network, no waiting or thinking about fees, fast and cheap.

[Karl_3000]

I do not totally agree. Some persons don't want stress and they do not transact so often or handle heavy transaction. What's so bad if one pays just a little more sats that sometimes is insignificant. Most times it's the convenience that's considered and not the sats.

It takes me just 10 seconds to check the mempool, it is nothing that hard to check. Bluewallet is always recommending 3 sat/vbyte even when the mempool is suggesting 0.5 sat/vbyte. I am not saying it is not a good wallet, it is a good wallet but I prefer to check the mempool. Some wallets recommend higher unnecessary fee.

For those who don't want to have such problems, I recommend that they try Lightning Network, no waiting or thinking about fees, fast and cheap.

The issue is lightning network is only good for little amount of money unless you connect to the receiver directly through a channel that no fee is necessary, but routing your payment through many channels, the higher the fee. And also that lightning network is not secure to me like the blockchain but maybe I am not right I still prefer on-chain.

[Lucius]

~snip~
The issue is lightning network is only good for little amount of money unless you connect to the receiver directly through a channel that no fee is necessary, but routing your payment through many channels, the higher the fee. And also that lightning network is not secure to me like the blockchain but maybe I am not right I still prefer on-chain.

Most people carry out low-value transactions, although the perception of value depends on where someone lives. For me, anything under $500 would be a low-value transaction; for someone else, it would be the exact opposite. I’ve tried Phoenix Wallet, and I think LN couldn't be simpler when using it - though everyone should read up on how the whole thing works.

I also prefer on-chain transactions, but it's always good to have an alternative when you need a quick transaction without waiting for the next confirmation block.

[hosemary]

You can check it with different Bitcoin mempool sites, more careful than checking with only one site.

What are you saying? If someone use mempool to check the transaction, do you not know what that means? It means the person is running a node and use the mempool of the node to check for transaction. Mempool is just one, no other information will be different on each nodes mempool regarding fee needed.

Each node has its own mempool. It's possible for a transaction to exist in one node's mempool but not in another node's mempool.
Also note that since different services may use different methods for estimating the required fee rate, they may give you different estimates.

[Karl_3000]

Each node has its own mempool. It's possible for a transaction to exist in one node's mempool but not in another node's mempool.
Also note that since different services may use different methods for estimating the required fee rate, they may give you different estimates.

It is true that transactions can be on a node and not be on another node because the node has not routed the transaction to the other node or the transaction dropped from the other node because of the node configuration like retention date set and congestion setting, but is the transaction fee (sat/vbyte) estimation different on each nodes? I was thinking the transaction fee needed is the same on all the nodes.

[hosemary]

but is the transaction fee (sat/vbyte) estimation different on each nodes? I was thinking the transaction fee needed is the same on all the nodes.

First of all note that there is no such thing as a "fee needed on a node", and transactions are included in the blockchain by miners, not nodes.
Second, neither nodes nor miners know how much fee rate is required for a transaction to get confirmed. We only have some tools that give estimates of the required fee rate.

[Tungbulu]

You see one thing I’ve observed as it concerns Bitcoin transactions is that, paying more (while it can be helpful) doesn’t always mean paying smart. When making a transaction, I mostly tend to consider the urgency of the transaction as well as the current fee market, rather than simply accepting whatever fee the wallet just throws at me. If the transaction I wanna make isn’t an urgent one, I’ll just choose a smaller fee and wait it out, that way I get to save a surprising amount, and then if maybe the situation changes, I’ll opt for RBF, this way I get to avoid overpaying from the start.

[Queen uloma]

You’re very correct, before I usually think that the higher transaction fee you pay to bitcoin miners the more faster your transaction will be confirmed. But now I know it’s the fee rate and mempool congestion that determines how competitive your transaction will be. Even if you pay higher total fee, a different transaction can still have higher fee rate and even go into block before yours.

For me, I believe it’s good to check the fee rate before sending your BTC, most especially when the network is busy. I won’t only depend on wallet recommendation always.

[Abu-Naim]

You’re very correct, before I usually think that the higher transaction fee you pay to bitcoin miners the more faster your transaction will be confirmed. But now I know it’s the fee rate and mempool congestion that determines how competitive your transaction will be. Even if you pay higher total fee, a different transaction can still have higher fee rate and even go into block before yours.

For me, I believe it’s good to check the fee rate before sending your BTC, most especially when the network is busy. I won’t only depend on wallet recommendation always.

Some people prefer to go by wallets fee recommendations since some wallets like blue wallets do give free recommendation for fast, medium and slow transactions, I believe these fee is estimated based on meme pool network recommendations because sometimes, the fee used to be high, and if you decide to go by lower fee in some of these wallets will not process the transaction which is mainly decided by network congestion, that is why checking the name pool space to know the estimated fee will be better if you want fast transaction so that the miners will take your transactions as quick as possible. It is also good to use wallets that can customize fee, so that you can bump the fee if the network get congested the more.

[Patikno]

Regarding this topic, I would just like to add a quick point: you can use the Electrum app to implement RBF (Replace-by-Fee), and the wallet also provides suggestions for setting the appropriate fee, and it allows the transaction you wish to make to be processed more effectively based on those recommendations, and based on the state of the Bitcoin network at a specific time.



Source : bitcoin.org - Electrum

By the way, based on the reference I included, you can also observe some of the same details in other wallets (such as; Bitcoin Core wallet and others), and you can see several applications supported by your device or OS (operating system).

[Cryptomultiplier]

You’re very correct, before I usually think that the higher transaction fee you pay to bitcoin miners the more faster your transaction will be confirmed. But now I know it’s the fee rate and mempool congestion that determines how competitive your transaction will be. Even if you pay higher total fee, a different transaction can still have higher fee rate and even go into block before yours.

For me, I believe it’s good to check the fee rate before sending your BTC, most especially when the network is busy. I won’t only depend on wallet recommendation always.

Those who rely on wallet recommendations are novice users that have no idea that trusting auto estimates could leave ones transactions pending for longer, that's why the more experienced users always refer to the Mempool.space tool before sending a transaction.

One can also do themselves good by enabling RBF in wallet settings by default or decide to bump fee Incase of urgency to raise the fees and speed up the transactions, otherwise they would have to be patient for a while till their estimated fees is accepted on upcoming blocks.

[Charles-Tim]

Some people prefer to go by wallets fee recommendations since some wallets like blue wallets do give free recommendation for fast, medium and slow transactions, I believe these fee is estimated based on meme pool network recommendations because sometimes, the fee used to be high, and if you decide to go by lower fee in some of these wallets will not process the transaction which is mainly decided by network congestion

The fee is not accurate on many wallets. But it is very possible a wallet make use of a site like mempool.space for fee estimation. I think I have seen this as an alternative fee estimation on Sparrow before.

One can also do themselves good by enabling RBF in wallet settings by default or decide to bump fee Incase of urgency to raise the fees and speed up the transactions, otherwise they would have to be patient for a while till their estimated fees is accepted on upcoming blocks.

Any bitcoin wallet that do not have the opt-in replace-by-fee set by default should not be recommended. It is set by default on most recommended wallets.

[tabas]

You see one thing I’ve observed as it concerns Bitcoin transactions is that, paying more (while it can be helpful) doesn’t always mean paying smart. When making a transaction, I mostly tend to consider the urgency of the transaction as well as the current fee market, rather than simply accepting whatever fee the wallet just throws at me. If the transaction I wanna make isn’t an urgent one, I’ll just choose a smaller fee and wait it out, that way I get to save a surprising amount, and then if maybe the situation changes, I’ll opt for RBF, this way I get to avoid overpaying from the start.

The fee that we're going to add isn't that much if you're in urgency and not. But that's true that it's helpful to pay more than the suggested fee that shall be likely confirmed within the next block. To avoid the waiting problem, plan your transactions as you have said and if you're not in a hurry then expect that it will still be confirmed later on. I don't have any problems anymore I think within a year or two when the network was no longer spammed and clogged by ordinals. The fee has been stabilized to single digit ever since.

[promise444c5]

For me, I believe it’s good to check the fee rate before sending your BTC, most especially when the network is busy. I won’t only depend on wallet recommendation always.

The things is.. no one can magically tell that the network is busy unless they check a site that provides such tool like the mempool.space .

On a normal day wallets should suggest something which is still within range or close to unless they have a minimum. The major problem could only arise when it suggest something “close to” and you have a big transaction size, you can end up overpaying a peanut or significant price in a very high congested market.

[Tungbulu]

The fee that we're going to add isn't that much if you're in urgency and not. But that's true that it's helpful to pay more than the suggested fee that shall be likely confirmed within the next block. To avoid the waiting problem, plan your transactions as you have said and if you're not in a hurry then expect that it will still be confirmed later on. I don't have any problems anymore I think within a year or two when the network was no longer spammed and clogged by ordinals. The fee has been stabilized to single digit ever since.

When it comes to fee urgency, it’s more about timing than it is about just paying more. Let’s assume the transaction isn’t time sensitive, then there’s little reason to overpay just to get the next block. Rather than just blindly rushing to up the fees, people can rather check the memepool first, and choose a fee based on how quickly they actually need confirmation, as this can help save sats without actually creating unnecessary stress.

[SamReomo]

Do you typically use RBF to offer a higher fee for transactions if they take longer to become confirmed or do you just wait for a transaction to get confirmed?

I use Electrum wallet and I use priority fee for transactions and it has been working for me without any issues for many years. I've never faced any issue and that's why I never needed to do RBF. When network got congested during that ordinals I waited for the hours where network congestion was not high and sent transactions using priority fee even in those times. For me it's okay to pay $1 or $2 more to get a transaction completed on time but such is needed only when network is congested in most times fees are very low for Bitcoin transactions.

[Peanutswar]

[...] Sometimes it's more beneficial than just the wallet with the highest fee.
It also just leaves me wondering about what other users do to deal with this. How often do you rely on the wallet for the fee recommendation. Or look into the fee market and mempool? Do you typically use RBF to offer a higher fee for transactions if they take longer to become confirmed or do you just wait for a transaction to get confirmed?

It depends on the urgency you want just to get your funds immediately, base on my experience, before I used to see the price for the low priority to mempool ranging before like 20$ but apparently right now I do always seen here like around 5 sat/byte as a higher priority, I do rarely use the RBF but instead just checking when the market traders are active so at least I cannot be part of those transactions stuck because of congestion. Instead I prefer to wait as long as the txid generated there is no problem with that well just if you will send bitcoin to buy a services most of them require at least 1 confirmation.