Can I send a transaction with zero fees? And if I could, what would happen? Would miners ignore my request? Who sets the price of fees for transactions?
Can I send a transaction with zero fees?
You can create transaction with zero fee. You can try to broadcast it to your peers. But there is no chance that your peers will accept it and rebroadcast.
And if I could, what would happen?
The same as for regular transaction with fees. Ignoring zero fee is not a consensus rule, but coded in most nodes.
Would miners ignore my request?
Today yes
Who sets the price of fees for transactions?
Market
Who sets the price of fees for transactions?
You can set fees for your transactions if you use a good wallet, such as electrum.
but the minimium fees accepted by nodes according to consensus rules is 1 sat/byte
No matter how congested the network is you can set your transaction to 1 sat/byte. I just did a 1 sat byte transaction few days ago. The network is very congested and it took 3 days to get the first confirmation.
usually a 1 sat/byte fee transaction is confirmed within 6 hours, based in my experience.
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1Note: the node relay policy of 1sat/byte minimum is not a consensus rule, it is just the standard policy of nodes, to prevent network spam attacks. – chytrik May 21 at 21:05
