Is your ETH transaction stuck? Here’s how to rescue it in 3 minutes.

Question: Why is the transaction always pending?

In simple terms, it's that the Gas fee is set too low. Ethereum is a bidding system— the higher the Gas fee you offer, the more willing validators are to process your transaction first. This is especially evident during network congestion.

There's another pitfall: the Nonce mechanism. Ethereum assigns a number to each transaction, and if a lower-numbered transaction gets stuck, all subsequent transactions have to wait, no matter how high the Gas is.

Emergency Plan

Plan A: Speedup

• The easiest way is to use MetaMask: click the “Accelerate” button on the pending transaction.
• Reset the Gas fee to a higher amount and resend with the same Nonce.
• Use Etherscan's Gas Tracker to check real-time prices, don't guess randomly.

Plan B: Cancel

• MetaMask has a built-in “Cancel” feature, allowing you to use it directly.
• The essence is to send a similar nonce with a higher gas fee for an empty transaction, overriding the original one.
• Advanced players can manually set a custom Nonce to operate.

Key Tips

⚠️ Once the transaction is confirmed on the blockchain, there is no turning back — Don't think about reversing it.

💡 Preventive Measures — When making a transaction next time:

• If you are not in a hurry, wait for when the network is not congested (send it in the middle of the night).
• If you're in a hurry, spend a little more on Gas fees.
• Use the Gas Tracker tool to estimate, don't set it blindly.

Bottom line: Accelerating or canceling is not 100% successful, and it may not work at all when the network is particularly congested. So next time, remember to set a reasonable Gas fee and be cautious to confirm it once again before sending.