estimateSmartFee error: “Insufficient data or no feerate found #32178

1. 
   ChayDragan commented at 7:17 pm on March 31, 2025: none

   Is there an existing issue for this?

   • I have searched the existing issues

   Current behaviour

   To estimate fees we use estimateSmartFee and were constantly running into the following error: estimateSmartFee error: “Insufficient data or no feerate found”

   As mentioned in other github issues, we could manually delete fee_estimate.dat and mempool.dat from the node. Which isnt scalable, so we moved to testnet4 with the understanding it would provide a more stable testing environment.

   Unfortunately, we have now started running into the exact same error on testnet 4, is this expected and are others seeing this issue? Regardless, is there any recommendations on how to bring more stability to getting fees back using estimateSmartFee on testnet4?

   Expected behaviour

   Fee rate is returned when using estimateSmartFee

   Steps to reproduce

   Make a call to estimateSmartFee

   Relevant log output

   No response

   How did you obtain Bitcoin Core

   Compiled from source

   What version of Bitcoin Core are you using?

   v.28.1

   Operating system and version

   Ubuntu

   Machine specifications

   No response

2. 
   pinheadmz commented at 8:24 pm on March 31, 2025: member

   As mentioned in other issues, fee estimation relies on mempool activity. If your node does not have a “good” mempool, your fee estimation will break. Check your bitcoin.conf for anything could limit mempool size or network connectivity.

   Quoting from other issue:

   It might be helpful to have version of the affected node and debug log output. You may need to run bitcoin-cli logging ‘[“estimatefee”]’ to add fee estimation log output. “mempool” may be helpful as well but could be spammy

   Also - it looks like testnet4 is not very active. I just took a quick look at a block explorer and there are long stretches of empty blocks. This is when fallbackfee is really necessary - the fee estimation algorithm can’t provide a result in the total absence of fee pressure.

3. glozow added the label TX fees and policy on Apr 14, 2025

Contributors
ChayDragan pinheadmz

Labels
TX fees and policy