So now that you’re an expert on mempool mining dynamics and fee rates, what other areas should you know about to optimize your fee rates?
- Transaction size and complexity: did you know you can decrease the size of your transaction and pay way less in total fees by using SegWit addresses that start with ‘bc1’ instead of a ‘1’ or ‘3’?
- Bull markets: often times, bull markets cause a ton of network congestion so if you’re looking to transact at a lower fee rate, avoid sending transactions during bull markets
- 9AM EST: did you know that BitMEX (one of the largest Bitcoin derivatives exchanges) usually clogs the mempool with a ton of transactions at 9AM EST every day? Best to avoid sending transactions at this time
- Lower time preference: if you want to optimize fee rates to a point where you pay only 1 sat/vbyte, then you and your recipient will have to lower your time preferences and practice patience 😉
- Batching: you can send bitcoin to multiple recipients in a single transaction
- Consolidation: you can consolidate your bitcoins (UTXOs) so that your future transactions use fewer inputs, decreasing your future transaction sizes
- Child pays for parent transactions (CPFP): your “child” transaction can pay for both its own and its parent’s transaction so that both transactions can be confirmed in the next block
- Lightning Network: this second-layer scaling solution allows you to send transactions in fractions of a second and pay tiny fees, but requires much more knowledge (eg. HTLCs, state channels, channel management, etc.)
- Weekends: typically, fee rates are lower on weekends due to less on-chain activity
Feel free to read this wiki on other ways to reduce your future transaction fees!
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Tags
- Explainers
Avoid Stuck transactions in the future
To avoid such situation in future always set high transaction fee for your transaction, If your wallet does not allow setting custom transaction fees, you should upgrade to a new wallet. If you are sending from the exchange then ask exchange support to set high transaction fee for quick confirmation.
Use Hardware Wallet Like Trezor or any other wallets that allow you to set custom Transaction Fee.
Check-in Explorer how many Transactions are pending, You can also check this by sending a small amount to test how fast your transaction. Based on that you can take your decision.
My Bitcoin Transaction is Stuck and Unconfirmed
You were expecting your bitcoin transaction to get mined and confirmed within the next block (~10 minutes), but for some reason your transaction isn’t going through.
It seems stuck and you’re worried that your transaction will never clear. You ask yourself, “have I just lost some bitcoin?”
If this sounds familiar, don’t worry – your funds are safe. Chances are, the fee you included in your transaction wasn’t high enough for miners to prioritize it.
