How to Cancel an Ethereum Transaction

One thing should be noted that as soon as your transaction gets added to the Ethereum blockchain you cannot cancel it. Therefore, transactions can only be canceled while they are in the mempool.

Before understanding how to cancel an Ethereum transaction we need to understand some terms related to it.

• Gas Fee

It is the transaction fee that we need to pay in order to get our transaction validated. Gas fee is measured in gwei. 1 gwei = 0.000000001 Ether. Miners prioritize the transactions which have paid higher gas fees leaving the low gas transactions lower in the queue.

• Nonce

A nonce is the number of the transaction of the sender’s address. Every transaction from an address is numbered sequentially, beginning with 0 for the first transaction. For example, if the nonce of a transaction is 10, it is the 11th transaction sent from the sender’s address. To find out the nonce of our transaction simply go to etherscan.io and paste your transaction ID( hash) there.

• Mempool

When a transaction is sent to the Ethereum blockchain, at first it is stored temporarily in the mempool. Basically, it is a pool of pending transactions and it stays there until a miner finds the hash and adds the transaction into the blockchain.

Now when we do a transaction it is sent to the mempool temporarily. When a miner finds the transaction he will verify it and add it to the blockchain ledger. Note that a miner will verify the transaction if he finds it profitable. Therefore those transactions which have paid less fees may take some time to get verified. 

5 Steps to Cancel Your Ethereum Transaction

1. Create a new Ethereum transaction where you will send 0 ETH to yourselves.
2. Increase the gas fees by a minimum of 10%
3. Now change the nonce of the transaction with the nonce of the pending transaction.
4. When we submit the transaction, the 0 ETH transaction will get executed first as it has higher gas fees. The pending transaction will get canceled because the blockchain will reject it. This is due to the fact that no two transactions can have the same nonce.
5. Note that the gas fees will be charged even for a canceled transaction.

You can check out this youtube video by Defi Dude:

You might be thinking that this process is quite technical so is there a way to cancel your transaction without going through all this hassle?

Some wallets provide the facility to cancel your transaction with just one click. Note that the process will remain the same, it’s just that it will be automated. One more thing which should be kept in mind is that the cancellation is not guaranteed. Therefore, if the transaction has been added to the blockchain it will not get canceled.

Here are some popular Wallets which support this feature –  Metamask, Trust Wallet and MyCrypto

How to Speed Up Your Ethereum Transaction

By increasing gas fee in another transaction with the same nonce you can speed up your transaction. This will save up your time whenever the Ethereum blockchain is congested.

Sometimes a transaction may get stuck when the network is congested. This is because the gas fees rise when the number of transactions in the mempool increases. Your transaction will show a pending status when it is in the mempool. 

Some wallets, such as the Metamask extension, already have a dedicated UI for speeding up transactions you’ve already started. However, due to the resubmission, you will be asked to pay the Gas fees again for the same transaction.

While some crypto wallets let you to speed up the process, others need you to do so manually.

5 Steps to Speed up Your ETH Transaction:

1. First of all create a new transaction with the same details.
2. Now go to the advance option and increase the gas fees by a minimum of 10% from the previous one.
3. Now change the nonce of the transaction with the nonce of the pending transaction.
4. When you submit the transaction, the new transaction will get executed first as it has higher gas fees. The pending transaction will get canceled because the blockchain will reject it. This is due to the fact that no two transactions can have the same nonce.
5. Note that the gas fees will be charged even for a canceled transaction.