How to Cancel a Pending Transaction

There is nothing more frustrating than a “Pending” transaction. You can’t send new transactions because they all queue up behind the stuck one. You’re frozen.

Why Do Transactions Get Stuck?

Usually, it’s because the Gas Price set for your transaction is too low.

1. You sent a transaction at 20 Gwei.
2. Network activity spiked, and now the going rate is 40 Gwei.
3. Validators are ignoring your low-fee transaction in favor of improved offers.

The Technical Solution: Nonce Replacement

Every transaction from your wallet has a serial number called a Nonce (0, 1, 2, 3…). Transactions must be processed in order.

To “cancel” transaction #5, you must send a new transaction with the same nonce (#5) but with a higher gas fee. This new transaction overwrites the old one in the mempool.

How to do this manually (The Hard Way)

In legacy wallets like MetaMask, this can be tricky:

1. Go to Settings > Advanced > Enable “Customize Transaction Nonce”.
2. Send 0 ETH to yourself.
3. Manually type in the Nonce of the stuck transaction.
4. Set a high gas fee.
5. Pray you didn’t typo the Nonce and mess up your history.

The Keyra Solution (One-Tap Cancel)

We built Keyra to handle this automatically. You don’t need to know what a “Nonce” is.

1. Tap the Stuck Transaction in your activity feed.
2. Tap “Cancel Transaction”.
3. Keyra automatically calculates the required gas boost (+10%) and broadcasts the replacement signal.
4. Within seconds, the old transaction is dropped, and your wallet is unblocked.

Note: You can also choose “Speed Up” if you still want the transaction to go through but just need it prioritized.

Prevention

Keyra’s Real-Time Gas Tracker ensures you never underpay for gas by monitoring the mempool 24/7. When you slide to send, we lock in a rate that guarantees inclusion in the next block.