Why is there more than one input on my BTC transactions?
Last updated
Last updated
Even though Freewallet is showing you the correct total amount of BTC in your wallet it may be that you have many Unspent Transaction Output’s (UTXO) that make up your total amount of BTC in your wallet. This naturally happens over time especially if you have done many counterparty transactions (small BTC transactions) and accumulate many UTXO’s on your address.
If you would like to learn more about this process and its relation to Counterparty and Freewallet (and have some time read and understand it) this medium article explains in detail what UTXO's are, how to view and manage them and their relation to Freewallet.
If you see more than one input from your address on a block explorer for a BTC transaction it most likely just means you had to use more than one UTXO on your address. Here is an example of a Bitcoin address with more than one "input" (or UTXO) on it as viewed on Blockchain.info
It is very common for not only Counterparty users, but also all Bitcoin users in general to consolidate these UTXO's by sending all of the Bitcoin on the address back to the same address it is on.
This process and best way to consolidate UTXO's is explained in the medium article mentioned before.
When it comes to the topic of MPMA sends (Multi-sends) using Freewallet and how extra outputs are used. These MPMA sends use Counterparty encoded send data within the Transaction data. These extra outputs are NOT send destinations.
Above is an example large-scale MPMA send using Counterparty. On Tokenscan the Transaction Hash is shown above with the Red Box and the Source address is shown with the Blue Box. You may see on a BTC explorer that extra outside addresses not related to your address are being included, just like this transaction above. Below is that exact same Transaction Hash, but shown on mempool.space with 'strange' inputs from addresses that start with a "3".
Multi-Sends work by encoding data into two transactions and having strange addresses (like addresses that start with "3") is not uncommon to see when looking over your transaction on a BTC block explorer. These are included in the fee when broadcasting the MPMA Counterparty send. How many extra output addresses are included depends entirely on the amount of data encoded in the MPMA send. It is important to note here that the data shown on Tokenscan for your multi-send is showing the accurate destinations that the multi-sends are being forwarded to.
The underlying tech is the reason you are seeing more outputs on a BTC block explorer.
If you are seeing the error "Failure to send not enough BTC in wallet" when you absolutely have enough BTC to cover your transaction it could be that this error is in relation to your UTXO’s on your address and please reference this guide in the Common Freewallet Errors section.