Understanding Ethereum Transaction Statuses
Transactions done on the Ethereum blockchain are publicly visible as an open database to anyone using the network. One such service that indexes blockchain data and activity is Etherscan.io, which is the most widely used block explorer and analytics platform for Ethereum.
One of the primary concerns when performing a transaction is it status code. This will inform you of the state of a transaction once it has been sent out.
These are some of the common transaction status codes indexed on Etherscan.io when you lookup transactions.
Pending
A pending status indicates that your transaction has been submitted to the network, and is currently sitting in the memory pool of transactions waiting for a miner to pick it up and include it in a block.
The amount of time your transaction spends in the memory pool depends on two main factors, the network congestion ( how many people are using the network ) and gas fee paid. Naturally, a higher gas fee has a higher chance to be included in a block faster as miners will receive monetary incentives for processing more expensive fees.
In layman’s terms, you are waiting in line for your transaction to be processed.
You can also view all pending transactions on the Ethereum network from Etherscan under the pending transactions page.
Success
A success status indicates that your transaction has been accepted by a miner and included into a block. This is by far the most common status, your transaction has went well with no issues.
Failed
A failed status indicates that your transaction has encountered an error during its execution process. When this happens, your actions are reverted as if nothing had happened, and your funds will be returned to your wallet.
Your gas fee however, will be consumed as part of paying the miners an incentive for trying to execute your transaction.
There are a number of reasons why your transaction can fail, some of them are Out of Gas, Reverted, or Bad Instruction.
Dropped and Replaced
This status is common when trying to speed up a transaction by sending another transaction, typically with a higher gas fee to replace the current transaction.
A transaction becomes dropped from the network when it is no longer being broadcasted by nodes on the Ethereum blockchain. This can happen when the maximum threshold of pending transactions a node can store has been met ( dependent on different settings ) and it starts to drop lower gas fee transactions.
What a you can do is send another transaction, with the same nonce ( a fancy word for transaction number ) and include a higher gas fee to replace the previous transaction since they effectively have the same nonce, aka transaction number. This transaction with a higher gas fee is more likely to be picked up by miners as there are greater monetary incentives for doing so.
The first transaction that you sent, which has been replaced, will be reverted and both your funds and gas fees are returned to you because nothing was processed yet.
On Etherscan, there will be a parameter indicating what transaction hash has replaced the one that has been dropped below the status code.
Conclusion
Block explorers can provide a wealth of information and invaluable access to blockchain data without having to run your own node. One of them includes transaction status codes, which is important to understand in order to transact with Ethereum safely.
Always be careful with transactions on blockchain, as they are irreversible. Don’t be the one asking for Ethereum’s so called central bank contact details.
Keep in mind that block indexers such as Etherscan.io and Blockchain.com merely index transactions, similarly to how Google only indexes web pages. They are not able to refund, reverse or cancel a transaction for you.
