Increase in Bitcoin transaction fee when the network is busy

[Hyphen(-)]

So I would love to know if any user here experienced same thing and how you went about it, do you have to wait for activities to decrease before making a transaction or you've other means of navigating through, I would I appreciate your opinion. Thanks..

If you understand mempool space, you will know how to find your way out with your Bitcoin transaction. You will study the blocks, know the exact stats in the first 10 blocks and know how to adjust your transaction fee if you want a fast transaction.
There are some wallets that can allow you to bump fee in case your transaction get stuck due to network congestion and you probably don’t check the fee and your fee is very low which will take your transaction long to be processed by the miners, you can bump the fee to meet up, so that you don’t wait that long.

[suzanne5223]

Other than that, as others have already pointed out the fees haven't been high for a very long time. So...
- When you did send your tx?

When is one of important factors for spending more or less satoshis in Bitcoin transaction fees. Weekends have cheaper fee rates, then transaction fees than working days.

As already said, the fee rate needed for getting a confirmation hasn't been high in the past year, and I don't think there has been a big difference between weekdays and weekends.
So, I don't think by "When you did send your tx?", pooya87 meant which day of the week OP's colleague made their transaction, but rather wanted to know how long ago the transaction was made.

The only thing I believe will lead to what the OP colleague experienced is either the transaction is something that happened during the previous Bitcoin network congestion season or the OP colleague is one of the BTC investors that don't understand transaction fee, and overpaid for his/her transaction fee.
https://x.com/f2pool/status/1702600488963940669

[tabas]

Seriously, the network has not been clogged again and I don't want to say that yet and hoping that it will never be clogged again.

The only thing I believe will lead to what the OP colleague experienced is either the transaction is something that happened during the previous Bitcoin network congestion season or the OP colleague is one of the BTC investors that don't understand transaction fee, and overpaid for his/her transaction fee.
https://x.com/f2pool/status/1702600488963940669

That was 3 years ago already? wow, time flies so fast and I haven't thought that it was too long ago already. Was only thinking around 1-2 years but yeah, it's all good and the fees have been so cheap and don't even touch more than 10 sats/vB anymore.

[Findingnemo]

Other than that, as others have already pointed out the fees haven't been high for a very long time. So...
- When you did send your tx?

When is one of important factors for spending more or less satoshis in Bitcoin transaction fees. Weekends have cheaper fee rates, then transaction fees than working days.

As already said, the fee rate needed for getting a confirmation hasn't been high in the past year, and I don't think there has been a big difference between weekdays and weekends.
So, I don't think by "When you did send your tx?", pooya87 meant which day of the week OP's colleague made their transaction, but rather wanted to know how long ago the transaction was made.

And these wanna be bitcoin investors don't have a clue about how cheap bitcoin transactions are these days. Even if they have been here since the ordinals, then they will realize how blessed they are to make a TX with 1-2sat/vb and that too included in the next block itself most of the day.

And these stories, like a friend or a colleague, are rapidly increasing with the new threads.

[hosemary]

Even if they have been here since the ordinals, then they will realize how blessed they are to make a TX with 1-2sat/vb and that too included in the next block itself most of the day.

Even 1-2 sat/vbyte is considered a high fee rate nowadays.
These days, you can usually get a fast confirmation even with less than 1 sat/vbyte.

Click here to see the most recent block. It has included many transactions with a fee rate of less than 0.3 sat/vbyte.

[Alphakilo]

Even if they have been here since the ordinals, then they will realize how blessed they are to make a TX with 1-2sat/vb and that too included in the next block itself most of the day.

Even 1-2 sat/vbyte is considered a high fee rate nowadays.
These days, you can usually get a fast confirmation even with less than 1 sat/vbyte.

Click here to see the most recent block. It has included many transactions with a fee rate of less than 0.3 sat/vbyte.

The last I noticed during a particular transaction is an increase in the fee rate to about 2 Sats/vbyte and that wasn't as it was before. What I can't explain or even bother to ask is if it happened automatically or it has always been like that. It makes more sense to understand that high traffic causes high fee rate but I doubt it would be as high if I didn't send a small amount instead of a large transaction amount that wouldn't have made the fee rate noticeable.

[Cricktor]

Click here to see the most recent block. It has included many transactions with a fee rate of less than 0.3 sat/vbyte.

Your link isn't the most recent block now. It points to block #969766 and this was the chaintip at the time of your post. Things from the past don't necessarily work to predict the nearest future.

While it may be interesting to look at some of the last mined blocks, I look at the current candidate block and the transaction fee histogram of it to make an assessment what feerate I have to choose for a rather fast confirmation.

If a transaction isn't that urgent, I will look at a few more candidate blocks in the queue of pending to be mined blocks, like 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th or 5^th block in queue.

Before sub-1sat/vB feerates became "normal" there were times with some really heavy mempool congestion and painfully high feerates for modestly quick tx confirmation. I don't like to have to pay more than say 10sat/vB or even beyond 100sat/vB, but those high feerate times were rare and ususally didn't last too long.

Nowadays we have a mild congestion of around 80k transactions pending, worth of around 40-41 blocks space. Currently the majority of ~44k transactions are in the feerate band of 0.10-0.21 sat/vB, ~15.3k transactions in the feerate band of 0.21-0.25 sat/vB, that's roughly 75% of all pending transactions at 0.25 and below sat/vB.

Right now at the moment paying a feerate of 0.33-0.35 sat/vB gets your tx almost certainly confirmed in the next block. But this can change, the mempool is dynamic and block production time is somewhat random and only on average over longer sample counts it's near the 10minute interval.

[Findingnemo]

Even if they have been here since the ordinals, then they will realize how blessed they are to make a TX with 1-2sat/vb and that too included in the next block itself most of the day.

Even 1-2 sat/vbyte is considered a high fee rate nowadays.
These days, you can usually get a fast confirmation even with less than 1 sat/vbyte.

Click here to see the most recent block. It has included many transactions with a fee rate of less than 0.3 sat/vbyte.

Yeah, almost every mining pool accepts tx less than 1sat/vb but we still don't have any wallet that allows user to send tx less than 1sat/vb by default, if I am not wrong and we have work a little bit to send 0.3sat/vb txs, good for consolidations but still 1sat is a lot cheaper than how much we used to pay even with less congestion.

[gracreavix]

Someone made mention in the comment that the fees are not as high as you said your friend did. First it's true that when there is high congestion of traffic, the fees get high and those that pay it make their transactions go faster. Since the fees like a commentator said is relatively low, what if the used an exchange that added additional fees to the transaction that made it look like the fees are high.

[hosemary]

Yeah, almost every mining pool accepts tx less than 1sat/vb but we still don't have any wallet that allows user to send tx less than 1sat/vb by default

Electrum allows you to make transactions with a fee rate of less than 1 sat/vbyte on both desktop and mobile versions, and all you need is to connect to a server that allows broadcasting such transactions.
Since there are many nodes that accept sub 1 sat/vbyte transactions, there's a very good chance that you don't need to change the server at all.

[SeriouslyGiveaway]

Electrum allows you to make transactions with a fee rate of less than 1 sat/vbyte on both desktop and mobile versions, and all you need is to connect to a server that allows broadcasting such transactions.
Since there are many nodes that accept sub 1 sat/vbyte transactions, there's a very good chance that you don't need to change the server at all.

Making Bitcoin transactions with fee rate under 1 sat/vbyte requires a little bit technical practice and there are guides on it. If don't do some technical steps, Electrum wallet only accept fee rates from 1 sat.vbyte and above.

How to make a bitcoin transaction and pay less than 1 sat/vByte
LoyceV's 0.1 sat/vbyte Electrum Server Adventure

[Findingnemo]

Yeah, almost every mining pool accepts tx less than 1sat/vb but we still don't have any wallet that allows user to send tx less than 1sat/vb by default

Electrum allows you to make transactions with a fee rate of less than 1 sat/vbyte on both desktop and mobile versions, and all you need is to connect to a server that allows broadcasting such transactions.
Since there are many nodes that accept sub 1 sat/vbyte transactions, there's a very good chance that you don't need to change the server at all.

I do that with default settings and the lowest I can go is 1 sat/vb but I am on a pretty old version of Electrum, so maybe I can if I update it to the latest one, I guess. But if it is just one click like the usual, then it is great.

[hosemary]

Making Bitcoin transactions with fee rate under 1 sat/vbyte requires a little bit technical practice and there are guides on it. If don't do some technical steps, Electrum wallet only accept fee rates from 1 sat.vbyte and above.

The guides you shared don't fully reflect the changes made to more recent versions of Electrum.
Since desktop version 4.6.2 and mobile version 4.7.0, all you need for making a transaction with a fee rate of less than 1 sat/vbyte is to be connected to a server that accepts such transactions.

In older mobile versions, it was not possible to make a sub 1 sat/vbyte transaction at all, and in older desktop versions, you needed to use a command in the console.

But if it is just one click like the usual, then it is great.

Yes, it's so simple.
Just note that you may need to change the server to one that accepts sub 1 sat/vbyte transactions.

[TheButterZone]

Making Bitcoin transactions with fee rate under 1 sat/vbyte requires a little bit technical practice and there are guides on it. If don't do some technical steps, Electrum wallet only accept fee rates from 1 sat.vbyte and above.

The guides you shared don't fully reflect the changes made to more recent versions of Electrum.
Since desktop version 4.6.2 and mobile version 4.7.0, all you need for making a transaction with a fee rate of less than 1 sat/vbyte is to be connected to a server that accepts such transactions.

In older mobile versions, it was not possible to make a sub 1 sat/vbyte transaction at all, and in older desktop versions, you needed to use a command in the console.

But if it is just one click like the usual, then it is great.

Yes, it's so simple.
Just note that you may need to change the server to one that accepts sub 1 sat/vbyte transactions.

That's great, if only the newer executable versions & even the Python sources install of Electrum didn't have minimum system requirements (PyQt6 binary wheel dependency on non-backward-compatible system frameworks and dynamic library symbols) above what some of us actually have.

I can only run Electrum 4.8.2 bypassing the GUI entirely and using TUI/text mode (-g text) or headless daemon commands, and I had to go through hell installing everything that should have been, but wasn't, done automatically by the first or second command after downloading the .tar.gz Python sources file.

Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but...

[nc50lc]

I do that with default settings and the lowest I can go is 1 sat/vb but I am on a pretty old version of Electrum, so maybe I can if I update it to the latest one, I guess. But if it is just one click like the usual, then it is great.

You're taking about the fee slider, right?
Even in the latest version v4.8.2, it's till constrained to 1sat/vB while moved all the way to the left, you'll need to manually edit the fee / absolute fee to set a lower fee rate.

Yeah, almost every mining pool accepts tx less than 1sat/vb but we still don't have any wallet that allows user to send tx less than 1sat/vb by default -snip-

By saying "by default" I assume you mean without changing any settings?
Because that minimum relay fee rate is a relay policy that nodes enforce, not by the wallet.
The wallet can implement an update to allow their users create sub-1sat/vB but successfully broadcasting it to the network is out of their control.

So, in case of SPV wallets, even if they allow it by default, the user will still likely need to select a server that supports it.
For full nodes or light clients that use compact block filters, it depends on its policies and its peers (latest standard/policy supports it, most Bitcoin nodes now accept it)

[Findingnemo]

I do that with default settings and the lowest I can go is 1 sat/vb but I am on a pretty old version of Electrum, so maybe I can if I update it to the latest one, I guess. But if it is just one click like the usual, then it is great.

You're taking about the fee slider, right?
Even in the latest version v4.8.2, it's till constrained to 1sat/vB while moved all the way to the left, you'll need to manually edit the fee / absolute fee to set a lower fee rate.

Yeah, almost every mining pool accepts tx less than 1sat/vb but we still don't have any wallet that allows user to send tx less than 1sat/vb by default -snip-

By saying "by default" I assume you mean without changing any settings?
Because that minimum relay fee rate is a relay policy that nodes enforce, not by the wallet.
The wallet can implement an update to allow their users create sub-1sat/vB but successfully broadcasting it to the network is out of their control.

So, in case of SPV wallets, even if they allow it by default, the user will still likely need to select a server that supports it.
For full nodes or light clients that use compact block filters, it depends on its policies and its peers (latest standard/policy supports it, most Bitcoin nodes now accept it)

Yes, using the fee slider or entering a value in the fee tab without using console. SInce the nodes are accepting the transactions lesser than 1sat/vb for a while then the wallet providers also should update it on their UI to make it more convenient because not everyone understand the code and it is better to not execute anything we don't understand.

[nc50lc]

-snip-

SInce the nodes are accepting the transactions lesser than 1sat/vb for a while then the wallet providers also should update it on their UI to make it more convenient because not everyone understand the code and it is better to not execute anything we don't understand.

Maybe Electrum will update their fee slider somewhere in the near future when 99% of the nodes accept sub-1sat/vB fee transactions.
If they do it now, newbie users who use auto-select server setting might encounter broadcasting issues when they set the lowest fee rate.
Or you can open a "feature request" issue (Electrum issues) if you want them to implement that feature, also to see what's the hold up.

On the other hand, Sparrow implemented it as a convenient auto-updating slider;
If the server accepts sub-1sat/vB transactions, their fee slider will have those extra steps below 1sat/vB, so issues like the above wont happen.

[TheButterZone]

Maybe Electrum will update their fee slider somewhere in the near future when 99% of the nodes accept sub-1sat/vB fee transactions.
If they do it now, newbie users who use auto-select server setting might encounter broadcasting issues when they set the lowest fee rate.
Or you can open a "feature request" issue (Electrum issues) if you want them to implement that feature, also to see what's the hold up.

For anyone who cares enough to open that issue (I don't as long as the devs killed Electrum GUI for my computer manufactured last decade), you can mention that every Electrum server you connect to can be polled for its fee via network.py & you see it print in terminal when you run from Python:

Code:

        async def get_relay_fee():
            actual_fee = await interface.get_relay_fee()
            print(f"Actual relay fee for {interface.server}: {actual_fee}")

... so it shouldn't be too hard to code an auto-updating-by-server fee slider.

(from https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5554840.msg67049112#msg67049112 / https://github.com/TheButterZone/electrum/blob/9109c702a5333d92a31dc84088df9f3145e60233/electrum/network.py#L494)

[serjent05]

The last time when the Bitcoin transaction fee was really a headache was way back 2024, after the ordinals, BRC-20, and Runes lost its hype, the Bitcoin network congestion lightened, and we have experienced low fees for more than a year now.

So I believe the transaction experience of the person @OP is talking about was when the network congestion was at its peak, probably around 2024.

And these wanna be bitcoin investors don't have a clue about how cheap bitcoin transactions are these days. Even if they have been here since the ordinals, then they will realize how blessed they are to make a TX with 1-2sat/vb and that too included in the next block itself most of the day.

And these stories, like a friend or a colleague, are rapidly increasing with the new threads.

Indeed, during the ordinals, it was a nightmare sending transactions, especially to those who are making a transaction with limited funds.  We have to look for ways to accelerate the transactions, and even people are exploiting the difficulties by asking for payment for a transaction bump (rebroadcasting transaction).

[Findingnemo]

-snip-

SInce the nodes are accepting the transactions lesser than 1sat/vb for a while then the wallet providers also should update it on their UI to make it more convenient because not everyone understand the code and it is better to not execute anything we don't understand.

Maybe Electrum will update their fee slider somewhere in the near future when 99% of the nodes accept sub-1sat/vB fee transactions.
If they do it now, newbie users who use auto-select server setting might encounter broadcasting issues when they set the lowest fee rate.
Or you can open a "feature request" issue (Electrum issues) if you want them to implement that feature, also to see what's the hold up.

On the other hand, Sparrow implemented it as a convenient auto-updating slider;
If the server accepts sub-1sat/vB transactions, their fee slider will have those extra steps below 1sat/vB, so issues like the above wont happen.

I stopped using sparrow for a while because their UI is kind of glitchy when we compare it with electrum clean UI, and paying less than 1sat/vb is not in my priority list for now, I just use the lowest possible using the fee slider and sometimes it can go upto 2sat or even a little higher to include in the next block which is still cheaper in my opinion, so I am sticking with it for now.