<p>I have an automated system that sends BTC payments via Electrum for a client.</p>

<p>Now, it happens again and again that payments keep failing with "min relay fee not met" (<code>RPC call failed: {"code":-32603,"message":"Server error: File \"/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/electrum/network.py\", line 871, in broadcast_transaction | electrum.network.TxBroadcastServerReturnedError: min relay fee not met\n"}</code>) for minutes or hours, and later it will work again.</p>

<p>A few facts:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>The fee is taken from Electrum's <code>getfeerate</code> with <code>fee_method: 'eta'</code> and <code>fee_level: 1</code> (this is already increased from the previous value), and it's actually afterwards inflated by another 20% by my code.</p></li>
<li><p>At first I thought it's an issue with Electrum servers. Now I'm using my own ElectrumX instance, and it happens there as well (I didn't find any way to set a fee limit). I then read that it is related to custom settings of Bitcoin nodes, but I'm now using my own Bitcoin node with default settings.</p></li>
<li><p>An example of a failing transaction would be this one: <a href="https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/d45a03bade61a2306994afa52cfd0f7cac18ec6965ec0425ae2010937f3afbad" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/d45a03bade61a2306994afa52cfd0f7cac18ec6965ec0425ae2010937f3afbad</a> &lt;&lt; this is when the transaction was <em>successfully</em> sent a few hours ago, but previously, around 12 hours ago, it kept failing - with the same fee: 45.853 sat/B - 11.463 sat/WU - 225 bytes</p></li>
</ul>

<p>If I look at bitcoinfees.earn.com I see the "normal" fees around 20 sat/B, yet the 45 sat/B TX didn't go through. Even if the fees had jumped a bit, it's not logical that I see transactions like <a href="https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/3d6cf1ab3bc8228110f4491a0fa8c7cd1652da3f912df29fe0011cebee774417" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this one</a> being successfully broadcasted at a similar time at which mine continued to fail, with only 3 sat/B...</p>

<p>Do you have any ideas what I could do about this problem? Of course I could react on this error by increasing the fees incrementally but this would cause trouble with my calculations and also it doesn't seem logical that I would have to pay a fee of 100+ sat/B when there are TXs with &lt;10 sat/B at the same time...</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-15T15:06:54.740Z
What is the total amount of the fee you get in the end? like you said the min relay fee policy is defined by each node and according to [this](https://bitcoin.org/en/transactions-guide#transaction-fees-and-change) the minimum fee amount  out of the box in Bitcoin Core, since 0.9, is 1000 sats.
FKrauss
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-15T17:38:03.553Z
0.00010317 BTC. As shown above, this is an example that worked https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/d45a03bade61a2306994afa52cfd0f7cac18ec6965ec0425ae2010937f3afbad but the same TX was sent 12 hours prior and got the error. Also, this other example https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/3d6cf1ab3bc8228110f4491a0fa8c7cd1652da3f912df29fe0011cebee774417 is a TX that succeeded with just 0.00000678 BTC fee...
CherryDT
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-16T17:23:53.100Z
Mempool being full can cause low fee paying transactions to be rejected, or even dropped if they were accepted previously. 

If you pay min-relay-fee, and there's a spike in mempool size, you become the first to be affected by this problem :) Also, it means your size estimation code needs to be perfect - as if it underestimates the fee, being 1 satoshi off can be the difference in accepted/rejected!

Most likely? maybe electrumx isn't giving you fresh information, or your code doesn't treat min-relay-fee as dynamic :)
karimkorun
<bitcoin-core><transaction-fees><electrum><error>
Intermittent error "min relay fee not met" even with decent fee and custom Electrumx+Bitcoind
CherryDT
# Intermittent error "min relay fee not met" even with decent fee and custom Electrumx+Bitcoind

(Asked by: username_0 on 2019-12-03)

I have an automated system that sends BTC payments via Electrum for a client.

Now, it happens again and again that payments keep failing with "min relay fee not met" (`RPC call failed: {"code":-32603,"message":"Server error: File \"/home/ubuntu/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/electrum/network.py\", line 871, in broadcast_transaction | electrum.network.TxBroadcastServerReturnedError: min relay fee not met\n"}`) for minutes or hours, and later it will work again.

A few facts:

* The fee is taken from Electrum's `getfeerate` with `fee_method: 'eta'` and `fee_level: 1` (this is already increased from the previous value), and it's actually afterwards inflated by another 20% by my code.
* At first I thought it's an issue with Electrum servers. Now I'm using my own ElectrumX instance, and it happens there as well (I didn't find any way to set a fee limit). I then read that it is related to custom settings of Bitcoin nodes, but I'm now using my own Bitcoin node with default settings.
* An example of a failing transaction would be this one: <https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/d45a03bade61a2306994afa52cfd0f7cac18ec6965ec0425ae2010937f3afbad> << this is when the transaction was *successfully* sent a few hours ago, but previously, around 12 hours ago, it kept failing - with the same fee: 45.853 sat/B - 11.463 sat/WU - 225 bytes

If I look at bitcoinfees.earn.com I see the "normal" fees around 20 sat/B, yet the 45 sat/B TX didn't go through. Even if the fees had jumped a bit, it's not logical that I see transactions like [this one](https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/3d6cf1ab3bc8228110f4491a0fa8c7cd1652da3f912df29fe0011cebee774417) being successfully broadcasted at a similar time at which mine continued to fail, with only 3 sat/B...

Do you have any ideas what I could do about this problem? Of course I could react on this error by increasing the fees incrementally but this would cause trouble with my calculations and also it doesn't seem logical that I would have to pay a fee of 100+ sat/B when there are TXs with <10 sat/B at the same time...

**Tags:** bitcoin-core, transaction-fees, electrum, error

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: What is the total amount of the fee you get in the end? like you said the min relay fee policy is defined by each node and according to [this](https://bitcoin.org/en/transactions-guide#transaction-fees-and-change) the minimum fee amount  out of the box in Bitcoin Core, since 0.9, is 1000 sats.  
> **username_0**: 0.00010317 BTC. As shown above, this is an example that worked https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/d45a03bade61a2306994afa52cfd0f7cac18ec6965ec0425ae2010937f3afbad but the same TX was sent 12 hours prior and got the error. Also, this other example https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/3d6cf1ab3bc8228110f4491a0fa8c7cd1652da3f912df29fe0011cebee774417 is a TX that succeeded with just 0.00000678 BTC fee...  
> **username_2**: Mempool being full can cause low fee paying transactions to be rejected, or even dropped if they were accepted previously.   If you pay min-relay-fee, and there's a spike in mempool size, you become the first to be affected by this problem :) Also, it means your size estimation code needs to be perfect - as if it underestimates the fee, being 1 satoshi off can be the difference in accepted/rejected!  Most likely? maybe electrumx isn't giving you fresh information, or your code doesn't treat min-relay-fee as dynamic :)  

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## 0 answers

