Best Way to Explain How to Speed Up or Cancel Transactions on MetaMask
Have you ever filed a transaction on MetaMask and waited FOREVER for it to be processed? Maybe you want to buy the latest and greatest token on Uniswap, or maybe you want to buy that NFT you’ve always wanted on Rarible. However, even when you submit your transaction, seconds, minutes, hours, and even days pass and your transaction has not yet been completed.
While there is a technical explanation 152 for why your transactions don’t go through right away, all you really need to know is that your transaction gets “stuck” somewhere and you may have to buy extra petrol to get it to go through. But why are you required to pay a greater fee? Didn’t you already pay the fee indicated by MetaMask when you completed your transaction?
Why is your transaction getting stuck?
Unfortunately, there was a rush in demand on the network when you submitted your transaction, which meant that other users who wanted their transactions to go through set higher gas prices than you did. Their increased gas expenses encourage miners to check transactions before you. Miners validate transactions from those who pay higher gas prices in the same way that Disney World allows people with fast passes, who paid more for those tickets than regular tickets, to enter rides before the masses.
You see that it has been 30 minutes and your transaction has not been completed. What are you going to do?
How to Break Free
You see that it has been 30 minutes and your transaction has not been completed. What are you going to do? well You actually have three choices, let break it down for better understanding
Waiting and hoping
The first alternative is to wait and hope that gas prices across the network fall. Perhaps you owe your mother money for a meal you ordered through GrubHub. Because your mother is an ardent ETHead supporter, she will only accept payment in ETH. You know your mother will still love you even if it takes some time for you to repay her. So perhaps you are willing to wait a few days to see whether network demand falls, incentivizing miners to eventually process your transaction.
Accelerate your transaction.
The second choice is to expedite your transaction. Perhaps you want to invest in the trendiest new token trading on Uniswap because you KNOW it is about to explode. In this case, you don’t want to miss out on the price action, so you could be willing to pay an extra premium to ensure your transaction is completed as soon as possible. This is possible via MetaMask’s speed up button, which can be found here see image bellow:
When you use the speed up function, you must pay an additional charge to miners in order for them to include your transaction as soon as possible. In this case, MetaMask is re-publishing the transaction with more gas using the same nonce as your original stuck transaction. Don’t worry if it’s too complicated. All you need to know is that if you are prepared to pay a little more, your transaction will be completed considerably more rapidly.
Cancelling the transaction
The final option is to cancel the transaction. Perhaps you were placing a bid for an NFT but now see that other people have bid considerably higher than you are willing to bid anyhow, so your bid would be worthless at this point. You can cancel the transaction for a minimal cost by clicking the cancel button, which is the bubble underneath the pending transaction. The advantage of canceling is that it will no longer be pending, which means you won’t wake up tomorrow thinking, “Wait a second, I didn’t even want that bid to go through but now it has!”having peace of mind for your finance.
This post is mainly meant to provide broad guidelines and information to those who are new to cryptocurrencies and DeFi. This material is not intended to provide legal, business, investing, or tax advice. All legal, commercial, investment, and tax ramifications and advice should be sought from your professionals.
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