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The Bitcoin network is growing day by day, dominating the entire crypto market.

But to handle this growing blockchain, Bitcoin network-facing lack of resources simply means there are not enough mining activities going on to handle the entire network.

The result of this gap is the network becoming slow, making transactions have to wait longer to get confirmation or even stuck at mempool forever.

Now there are many solutions to bypass the stuck of transactions.

I’ve already made a detailed post on one solution using a third-party Bitcoin Transaction Accelerator.

In this post, I’m going to explain another solution that is Replace-By-Fee in short RBF.

What Is RBF?

As the name indicates, RBF is the method that unstuck the Bitcoin transaction by replacing the fees.

Fees are the main culprit for a transaction not getting confirmation from the miner. If you include a higher fee, then the chance of getting confirmation from the miner becomes high because in the end a miner doesn’t do mining for free; they receive a block reward with the transaction fee for their hard work.

And remember, as I told you that the Bitcoin network is growing bigger and bigger, the network is lacking miners to maintain the network. Miners took advantage of this imbalance by prioritising the high fees transactions.

So if you send the transaction with a low fee, then definitely your transaction is going to wait for a long… long… time.

RBF came as the saviour for allowing you to create new transactions with the same amount but including slightly higher fees so your transaction gets confirmation easily.

How Does RBF Work?

In the Bitcoin network, every transaction has to pass certain steps to ultimately making it to the blockchain.

For example: Let’s say you make a transaction with the fee of 1 satoshi/byte, firstly your transaction goes to the node that confirms your transaction is valid and stores it with a bunch of other transactions in mempool.

Miner came looking for the transaction in mempool, most likely looking for the higher fee transaction to add into the network so that they get a high reward.

As your transaction has the 1 satoshi/byte fee, it will get ignored, so you and your recipient have to wait for a very long time to finish the transaction, or even the transaction can be stuck in mempool forever.

This is where RBF came in, helping you replace the old transaction with the new transaction that has the same inputs as the old one but with a higher fee, this will increase the probability of getting miner confirmation.

To understand deeper, let’s look at different types of RBF transactions.

Types of RBF.

#1. Full RBF.

This variant of RBF is the same as what I explained above, allowing a transaction to replace an older one so long as it pays a sufficient fee.

#2. Opt-in RBF.

Under this variant, the sender has to flag a transaction as a replacement before it is sent.

One downside of this variant is that users must know in advance when they may wish to replace a transaction. For this reason, many wallets elect to use Opt-in RBF as default.

#3. First-Seen-Safe RBF.

In this variant, the sender is only allowed to replace the transaction if all the amounts of all the outputs from the original transaction have to be met.

This variant is created because of countering the enormous claim against RBF that it makes double-spend attacks easier.

One downside of this variant is that the change output is necessarily treated as a payment, and cannot be reduced. This results in larger transaction sizes (as additional inputs must be added) and therefore fees.

#4. Delayed RBF.

As a name, this variant allows replacing the original transaction only after it has not been included in a block for a certain number of blocks.

This RBF allows a sender to give miners time to include their transaction in a block at a lower fee, thereby potentially saving the sender money.

Ok, now you understand the concept of RBF, and it is the right time to look at some advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages of RBF.

Speedup The Transaction.

Speeding up the confirmation process of the transaction is the main advantage of RBF.

It is frustrating to see the transaction is stuck in the world’s most secure network Bitcoin blockchain so the RBF came as the saviour.

Efficient Use of Block Space.

Efficient use of Bitcoin blockchain is possible only when transactions are happening in the network. If the Bitcoin blockchain is filled with low fee unconfirmed transactions, it can’t be used effectively.

RBF gives the second chance for those stuck transactions to get confirmation, this way making the whole network run effectively.

Effective Fee Market.

Allowing unconfirmed transactions to get a confirmation in a second attempt by increasing the fee can result in a more effective fee market for Bitcoin Blockchain.

These are all some advantages of RBF.

Now, look at some Disadvantages.

Disadvantages of RBF.

Leads To Double Spend Attack.

Many criticized RBF because they argue that it is slightly easier to double-spend unconfirmed transactions.

So to make RBF a secure way to unstick transactions, many variants are released, ensuring transactions can’t be double-spend even though criticism exists.

Ok, now you know the ins and outs of RBF. The next thing is to choose the best RBF enabled wallet.

So I listed some RBF enabled wallets that may help you make your decision correctly.

List of RBF Enabled Wallets.

Electrum.

A famous Bitcoin software wallet offering comes with an RBF option.

Electrum is one of the few wallets that supports RBF for both sending and receiving.

Samourai Wallet.

Samourai Wallet is the trusted Bitcoin wallet for Android devices.

They offer Opt-in RBF support for Bitcoin transactions.

Trezor.

Trezor wallet is a well-known crypto hardware wallet.

Their desktop app Trezor Suit fully implemented RBF from version 21.2.2 and also has on-device support for Trezor Model T with firmware 2.3.5 and up as well as Trezor Model One with firmware 1.9.4 and up.

Edge Wallet.

Edge wallet is the mobile wallet for both Android and iOS users supporting RBF.

Exodus Wallet.

Exodus is a leading Desktop, Mobile and Hardware wallet with a built-in exchange supporting RBF.

BitPay Wallet.

BitPay is the leading Bitcoin payment service provider. They added the RBF support on their mobile wallet.

Bitcoin Core.

Bitcoin Core is a full bitcoin client allowed to change the fee to boost the translation using RBF.

Conclusion.

Replace-By-Fee is the saviour for those transactions that are stuck in the mempool for a while and can spend some extra fee to release them.

And now, many wallets have come forward to support RBF so that you don’t have to worry about waiting for long to get confirmation if you can spend a bit extra to bypass waiting time.