Transactions seen by peers, but not confirming

5

1

I have an old MultiBit wallet (v. 05.16) and within the last month I have experienced delays when transferring bitcoin. Some transfers have been seen by 2 peers and some by 6 peers, but none have gone through.

One of those transactions was f0ecb670ba640eeff7762c63c2e220ec469180feb08305e1af64c271530e8a2e0: Seen by 10 peers. Pending/unconfirmed.

Can you provide any troubleshooting advice? Can I reverse or cancel the transaction?

otto

Posted 2016-03-30T09:40:31.880

Reputation: 59

Did you attach a sufficient transaction fee? Is there a particular reason why you use outdated software? Can you provide a transaction ID, so one can inspect the details of the transaction? Have you looked around at previous questions? We've had dozens of questions about "unconfirmed transactions" in the past weeks.Murch 2016-03-30T09:44:11.883

f0ecb670ba640eeff7762c63c2e220ec469180feb08305e1af64c271530e8a2e: Seen by 10 peers. Pending/unconfirmed.otto 2016-03-30T11:13:58.333

Your transactions don't seem to get propagated, at least I could not find this one on either blockexplorer.com, blocktrail.com or blockchain.info. Multibit Classic 5.16 is more than two years old, I would guess that it estimates the fee badly, and thus your transactions probably don't fulfill the minimum relay fee criterion and therefore don't get relayed by the peers that have seen them. Also see I sent bitcoin from MultiBit Classic but they are stuck. You should probably upgrade to a newer version.

Murch 2016-03-31T10:56:50.773

thanks, I have updated and are now using multibit HD. Will the transfer be reversed/stopped or will it stay forever pending ?otto 2016-03-31T13:22:29.133

As suggested in the instructions I linked above, "You can remove the transaction that never propagated by doing a 'Tools | Reset Block chain and Transactions'. ".Murch 2016-03-31T16:06:04.573

Did it, and 2 bitcoins came back. Thanks alot, how can I endorse you Murch..otto 2016-04-01T11:14:45.787

Answers

3

Okay, some observations:

  • MultiBit Classic 5.16 is more than two years old.
  • The transaction you mentioned doesn't appear on either blockexplorer.com, blocktrail.com or blockchain.info. It seems that they didn't get propagated in the network.

The Bitcoin transaction market has evolved in the past two years and due to a higher demand, the transaction fees have become more competitive. I would guess that your old version of MultiBit wouldn't have a good estimation for fees. Therefore, it seems likely that your transactions didn't fulfill the 'minimum relay fee' criterion and didn't get relayed by the peers that did see them.

I found this FAQ that addresses specifically your issue: I sent bitcoin from MultiBit Classic but they are stuck., which provides a similar explanation as one of the most likely reasons.

You should:

  1. Update your software to a more current version to mitigate this issue in the future.
  2. As suggested in the above FAQ: "You can remove the transaction that never propagated by doing a Tools | Reset Block chain and Transactions."

As always, if you don't have a backup of your wallet, you should create one, especially before changing things about your Bitcoin software, but also in general.

Murch

Posted 2016-03-30T09:40:31.880

Reputation: 41 609

Resseting the blockchain did the trick for me, thankswebo80 2017-12-12T12:16:49.320