Stuck transactions in the bitcoin mempool

Hey everyone, I sent a transaction without noticing that the fee was just 203 sats. Now, it's hanging out in the mempool, and of course, it's not going anywhere. The kicker is that the fee to accelerate it is almost half of what I'm trying to send. It's been 6 days, and it's still not confirmed. Is there a time limit for how long a transaction can stay unconfirmed? Also, can I cancel it and resend with a higher fee? Would appreciate any tips.

You can let us know the txid. If you use a wallet that supports RBF, you can increase the fee to double spend it. What wallet did you use to make the transaction? If the transaction has change, you can use child-pay-for-patent. This should be used if the transaction does not support replace-by-fee.

Bitcoin node usually drop TX that remain unconfirmed for more 2 than weeks or when their mempool is full in order to store unconfirmed TX with higher fee rate. FWIW, few Bitcoin wallet won't let you create TX using unconfirmed input.

You are right but OP is not posting. I think probably the discussion would have headed to how he can do it, like to import the seed phrase or private key into Electrum to do it which can even be through coin control. Or if he has just received a single transaction on the wallet and spend part of it with the transaction he referred to on this thread. He can use any wallet to spend all the remaining balance (which is the change) which would be CPFP also. Or maybe he is the receiver and he sent it to a noncustodial wallet.

Are you perhaps pertaining to "mempool.space" when you mentioned "in the mempool"? Because that "acceleration fee" is just a service fee for their transaction acceleration paid feature and it's usually expensive. If so, you can cheaply accelerate it with RBF or CPFP (the change) depending on the wallet that you've used to send it. That is as long as it doesn't have a lot of children transactions that have high transaction fee. So, the question is which wallet have you used to send? For now, look for feature in your wallet that tells "increase fee", "RBF" or "child pays for parent", if there is, use it. (some wallet implements it intuitive enough)

It's vague information because transaction fee = transaction size * fee rate (in satoshi/vbyte), and Bitcoin miners pick transactions on tip of mempool to confirm. It depends mainly on your transaction fee rate as a first criterion and I can not say anything without knowing fee rate you used when broadcasted it. For now, Bitcoin mempools are better and with 2 satoshi/vbyte, your transaction would be confirmed in a next 1 block. Is your transaction still stucked? I don't use Bitcoin tx accelerators but you can check if you need them. [Mega resources for newbies] Check here, find most of your need, before asking. You can wait for about 14 days and see whether that stucked transaction is dropped of mempools. Remember there are different mempools and your stucked transaction can be dropped of one mempool but is still kept in other mempools. If you don't want to wait, and your transaction is still stucked today, learn how to use RBF or CPFP for now and future situations as well. [TUTORIAL]getting a low-fee transaction unstuck by creating a CPFP with electrumAll about transaction fees in Electrum.Minimize your transaction fee with Electrum wallet

Just wait if your wallet doesn't support RBF, either it will be dropped or confirmed. Currently required fee for a TX to confirm is just over 1sat/B and it's the lowest possible fee you can set while broadcasting a Bitcoin transaction so you got nothing to worry about the unconfirmed TX. And don't use accelerators which are expensive and doesn't really need at the moment cause mempool is being at the lowest for a while.

I've never had a transaction stuck for so many days during congestion (no more than 7 days i think), but it's always good to have a good wallet that has RBF and/or CPFP, like Electrum, Bluewallet... I found a complete list of open-source wallets (always try to use wallets with this feature). Normally, it's hard to find a wallet that doesn't use either of these, and if it doesn't, it's a terrible wallet that should be avoided at all costs! Before making new transactions, always check the average fee rate requested per block. You can use the mempool.space as a reference. There you will find the pending transactions and fees, which are currently at 1 Sat/B (greenish cubes). The blocks with shades of purple are the blocks that have already been confirmed and the average fees that they (the miners) included in the blocks (which, at the time of posting, the last ones accepted are between 1 and 4 sat/B). You can use them as a reference, using between 2 and 4 sat/B so that your transaction doesn't run the risk of being in limbo. If you set too low of a fee, your transaction might be pushed back since higher-fee transactions will take priority (what we call limbo in the mempool), since the Block space is competitive, and miners will always choose the transactions that pay more.

Knowledgeable Bitcoin users must know and use open-source, non-custodial wallets to use and chosen wallets must have Coin Control features. If you are unsure, they can use filter from this one, and customize parameters for their own filter. https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet There are some good Bitcoin mempool observer websites and I also wrote my thread about this and there is an option to use free or paid Bitcoin acceleration services too. Minimize your transaction fee with Electrum walletBitcoin mempool observers https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC%20(default%20mempool),24h,weighthttps://mempool.jhoenicke.de/#BTC,24h,weigh[Telegram Bot] Bitcoin Fees - fees and tx trackerBitcoin acceleration services - Fee comparison