I set my transaction fee low, but shouldn't my transaction have gone through?
273 sats \ 8 comments \ @Signal312 3 May bitcoin
I did a transaction yesterday and set my transaction fee on the low side - 12 sats/vB, just kind of as an experiment. It hasn't gone through yet.
But looking at the historical fee data (https://mempool.space/graphs/mining/block-fee-rates#1w), it looks like there WERE times when the minimum fee was lower, like around 3sats/vB, around block 841730.
So, why wouldn't my transaction have been confirmed?
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @BenAllenG 3 May
It's very possible that the miners hand selected those low fee transactions, in fact many mining pools mine their own transactions for no fee at all
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @BenAllenG 3 May
While there are algorithms to automatically select the highest transactions in a block miners didn't have to use this in their block creation
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @Satosora 3 May
You just have to wait. If you want it sooner, set it up higher. If your fee isnt attractive enough, they wont mine it unless they have to. It all depends on what they want to mine.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 3 May
Unless they have to?
Miners don’t have a choice?
When I drained my phoenix wallet and moved the funds on chain the fee was very low , almost zero, and I was thinking this will never be confirmed.
I started the transaction on a Friday night and after 24 hours I sent a note to phoenix support. They replied Monday morning to tell me there were multiple confirmation. I checked mempool and voila.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @oliverweiss 3 May
Well, how big was the transaction in vB? Even if the fee was 3 sat/vB, I guess, it was worth for the miner to take it.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @senf 3 May
Mempool by vbyte is a better graph to look at. When all 13 sat/vbyte are gone you'd expect your transaction to be in line next.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @WeAreAllSatoshi 3 May
It’s a fair question. Miners can be selective as to which transactions they include. Could be their own that they prioritize when fees are low, so they lose less revenue. Could also be that there were just more pending transactions than available spots in the blocks and yours just wasn’t selected.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Signal312 OP 3 May
I think this is very probably it. For those scattered blocks where there are 3 sats/vByte transactions or even lower, there's a huge jump to the next category of fees, often something like 16 or so.
So it makes perfect sense that the big mining pools are including these, because these transactions are their own. But they won't include anyone else's transactions.
Hopefully Sunday morning (when fees are often low) it'll get pushed through. Otherwise I'll need to figure out the whole CPFP - child pays for parent idea. It looks really complicated.
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