Weird fee estimation

[Overtorment]

Im constantly comparing result of estimatefee with https://mempool.space and electrumx
always provides way higher values. And occasionally I use Electrum-desktop - I think I noticed if offers incorrect (too high) fee as well.

bitcoind ver: 0.20.1
electrumx ver: 1.15.0 (from this repo)

[SomberNight]

Do you mean the blockchain.estimatefee RPC? ElectrumX just forwards those calls to bitcoind estimatesmartfee ("conservative" mode)

[SomberNight]

If you want mempool based fee estimates, you should compute your own in the client, as Electrum does in mempool mode.
The client can get a view of the mempool calling mempool.get_fee_histogram.

[Overtorment]

thanks! will dig in that direction

[SomberNight]

Note that blockchain.estimatefee can take an optional second parameter for the mode for bitcoind (so you can set it to economical), since kyuupichan/electrumx#1001.
It was not added to the protocol documentation in that PR and the protocol version was not bumped either, so you cannot be sure if the server supports it :/
I am making it part of protocol version 1.5 though (#80).

[benma]

@SomberNight are there still plans to add a protocol version 1.5 that officially documents the 2nd argument of estimatefee()?

[SomberNight]

Yes. The protocol 1.5/2.0 (#90) stuff is still on my TODO list, but realistically I don't know when I can get to it.