To begin with, let us understand what does Nonce means – Nonce is the position in the sequence of transactions that is being executed by your wallet.
You might come across the issue of Nonce if you have multiple transactions pending (say, for example, your first transaction is still pending maybe because the gas fees were too low, then you try for a second transaction and now this is waiting too so that the first transaction is cleared).
If there are multiple transactions in sequence, Ethereum will always try to clear the transactions that were initiated first, before moving on to the next transaction.
This is done to ensure there are no malicious attacks on the network by initiating transactions in bulk.
The ‘Nonce Too Low’ Issue is quite common while using MetaMask, here’s what it means and how to solve it.
What Does It Mean By Nonce Too Low?
Nonce Too Low error occurs because of the nonce that is being used by the Metamask wallet at the time of transaction creation.
Nonce Too Low means that the used nonce is incorrect, and the Ethereum node in the network that is being communicated by your Metamask wallet indicates that there is a more recent transaction that is pending (that has a higher nonce).
Some potential ways to solve it:
- Increase your nonce
- Wait for sometime and then try again
How To Increase Your Nonce?
The Nonce value is usually hidden and needs to be set/adjusted manually.
Here’s how to do it on Metamask:
Step 1: Log in to your Metamask Account
Step 2: Click on ‘Settings’.
On the top right corner of your account, click on your profile photo and choose ‘Settings’ from the drop-down menu.
Step 3: Click on ‘Advanced’.
You will find a menu of options to the left, in the Settings tab.
Choose ‘Advanced’ in that.
Step 4: Toggle ‘Customise Nonce’.
You will find this option by scrolling down a bit.
By default, the toggle is off.
Step 5: Now when you initiate an Ethereum transaction with your MetaMask Wallet, at the time of the transaction, you can also find the option to set your nonce.
You can fill this out accordingly.
Also Read: Fix: “Metamask Insufficient Funds” or “Confirm Button Gray Out” Error
What Does Nonce Mean On MetaMask?
It is one of the most important and less understood concepts of the Ethereum blockchain.
The Ethereum Yellow Paper defines it as the number of transactions (absolute number) sent from a particular Ethereum wallet address.
This nonce is not stored in any way on the blockchain but is just the value of the total transactions coming from a wallet.
To understand the importance of nonce, first, know that Ethereum is essentially a network of nodes that is decentralized.
When you initiate a transaction with Metamask for example, it is sent to a temporary pool and stays there till the mining is done and is added to the respective block.
Suppose you send two back-to-back transactions from your Metamask wallet, without the Nonce number, the miner would not know which transaction was initiated first.
On the other hand, with Nonce, your first transaction would be Nonce 0, and the second would be Nonce 1 (assuming you never had any transactions initiated before this).
The miner would now know the order and would process the Nonce 0 transaction first, before moving onto the Nonce 1 transaction.
As mentioned above, you can manually set the Nonce too, in other words, the order in the sequence of transactions to be executed.
What Does A Nonce Of 0 Mean?
Every transaction on the Ethereum blockchain will have a Nonce value associated with it corresponding to the wallet the transaction is created from.
A Nonce of ‘0’ means it is the first transaction to be executed from a particular wallet.
Nonce values increment in the order of ‘1’ with every sequential transaction.
What Does Nonce Too Low Mean In Metamask?
Consider a scenario where you already have transactions pending on Metamask with Nonce 0 and Nonce 1, and for some reason, they have not been executed yet.
While you initiate the third transaction, if you custom set the Nonce as ‘1’, you will come across this error – signifying that there is already a transaction pending with that Nonce number so you have to choose a higher nonce number to fix this error.
In this case, you need to set Nonce ‘2’ or above.
Why Does “nonce Too Low” Error Occur In MetaMask?
The error occurs where there’s already a more recent transaction with the Nonce value that is being used.
Nonce’s too low error is to maintain the ‘Nonce’ stack on MetaMask which is in turn important to understand the order of transactions to be mined by the Ethereum miners, and also to prevent the flood of malicious attacks.
How To Fix The “nonce Too Low” Error In MetaMask?
Fixing this error is a piece of cake!
Consider two cases
- First, if the transaction is being initiated from a Web3 wallet such as MetaMask
- Second, if the transaction is not coming from any Web3 Wallet.
In the MetaMask, Go to Settings > Advanced > Reset Account.
This will reset the Nonce count associated with your wallet to 0 by clearing all previous transaction history stored in the cache of your browser.
The next transaction that you initiate will be Nonce 0 and will be executed first.
In other cases – it is recommended to wait for a few minutes for the server to clear its own transaction load and try again.
Also Read: How To Add Solana To MetaMask Wallet?
Conclusion
This is all about the Nonce concept on the Ethereum Blockchain and simple ways to fix a commonly occurring error.
Read more about Nonce and its technical guides better to understand the concept from a programming perspective, if you need to.
Enjoy your transactions on MetaMask now that you know how to fix this error!
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Closed
danfinlay opened this issue
Jul 24, 2017
· 11 comments
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Since our last version release, v3.9.1, I’ve gotten a couple reports of Transaction nonce is too low errors.
Our former trick of resetting the provider by switching the network to another and back again does not help people in this state.
Reported most recently by @gm9 in our slack, who I’ve asked for some UI state logs that could help in the investigation.
In the meanwhile, let this issue represent a bug in the nonce tracker that results in nonces being set incorrectly low.
was just able to reproduce locally
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Slack user @gm9 got back to me and provided some logs, the failed transactions had no nonce set.
@FlySwatter nonce was missing from params for gm9? hmmm — thats what i was seeing before pulling latest — maybe we’re not handling an error while getting the nonceLock
that is different from @dyzz’s issue(s) some observations:
- log shows a few txs with
"cb is not a function"as the error - later (after restart? update?) its encountering a «nonce too low» error when using a nonce that already succeeded — not sure how you could encounter that
- i see the latest transactions from this address not in the logState tx history, but made before @dyzz published this log (@dyzz are you using a different device/wallet?)
@kumavis I tried to switch between different networks, and I did send a transaction from my cell phone.
- we merged in fixes for [1] (most likely related to insufficient balance on resubmit)
- we added some really verbose history logging to generally help diagnose [2] and
gm9‘s issue and maybe even @libreoscar’s compact and emotionally charged contribution to this ticket «😕»
we’ll publish these today with some other fixes and try to get more insight into these bizarre nonce failures
@kumavis it seems that result from ‘eth_getTransactionCount’ of ropsten on infura is somehow wrong.
e.g.
https://ropsten.etherscan.io/address/0xd37448ad7949c4ad8eba5aad1a0afdd3199971d8
expected nonce: 2
actual:
https://ropsten.infura.io/metamask
curl -X POST \ https://ropsten.infura.io/metamask \ -d '{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": 1, "method": "eth_getTransactionCount", "params": [ "0xd37448ad7949c4ad8eba5aad1a0afdd3199971d8","latest" ]}'
{
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"id": 1,
"result": "0x0"
}
another example:
address: 0xE89BB07333b3D792C29c744511bbCFAEE0DdD4b7
expected nonce: 82
actual: 76
{
"jsonrpc": "2.0",
"id": 1,
"result": "0x4c"
}
Thanks for the report @dyzz, EG From INFURA here. We’re able to reproduce and are looking into it. Ill send an update shortly.
Hi @dyzz after looking into it further, the numbers returned by Infura are correct. It looks like you are comparing the transactionCount number to etherscan’s total transaction count number which includes both In and Out transactions. If you compare the number of outgoing transactions to the value returned by the Infura RPC, Infura and Etherscan’s responses are identical. Let us know if we can help further debug this issue.
we’ve made some significant improvements here — folding this into #1127
The nonce is the total number of transactions which has been sent from this wallet so far, and is included for security purposes. We recommend to leave the nonce empty. We ‘ll fill it for you.
- What does it mean when nonce is too low?
- What does a nonce of 0 mean?
- What is nonce in Blockchain?
- What is nonce Ethereum?
- Can I cancel a transaction on Etherscan?
- Why is my Ethereum transaction taking so long?
- Why is polygon transaction taking so long?
- How do you accelerate Ethereum transactions?
- What is nonce in proof of work?
- Does Ethereum use nonce?
- Does nonce prevent double spending?
- How big is a nonce?
- How is nonce calculated?
- How is nonce generated?
What does it mean when nonce is too low?
Web3 error: nonce too low
It means that the nonce being used is not correct, as the Ethereum node your wallet is communicating with indicates that there is a more recent transaction (with a higher nonce).
What does a nonce of 0 mean?
However with nonce, if your first transaction (10 ETH) has nonce 0 (assuming its a new account) then 14 ETH transaction will have nonce 1. Now, transaction with 14 ETH won’t be mined unless previous transaction of 10 ETH (with lower nonce) is mined. Hence, maintaining the sequence of transactions.
What is nonce in Blockchain?
A nonce is an abbreviation for «number only used once,» which is a number added to a hashed—or encrypted—block in a blockchain that, when rehashed, meets the difficulty level restrictions. The nonce is the number that blockchain miners are solving for, in order to receive cryptocurrency.
What is nonce Ethereum?
In Ethereum, every transaction has a nonce. The nonce is the number of transactions sent from a given address. Each time you send a transaction, the nonce increases by 1 . There are rules about what transactions are valid, and the nonce is used to enforce some of these rules.
Can I cancel a transaction on Etherscan?
Head to Etherscan.io, Ethplorer.io, or EthVM. Step 2. Paste your transaction hash. If it says pending, you can still try to cancel it.
Why is my Ethereum transaction taking so long?
Regarding (1) fees, the Ethereum network has limited capacity to process transactions. … If the fee you attached to your submitted transaction is too low and network congestion remains high, there’s a chance your transaction will stay pending for hours or even days.
Why is polygon transaction taking so long?
By far, the most common reason a transaction gets stuck or takes longer than usual is low gas price. … The gas price that you may have used two hours ago when the network was uncongested, may not be enough gas now if the network activity has increased since then.
How do you accelerate Ethereum transactions?
Clicking on the “speed up” button in their Ethreum wallet should allow the transaction to be processed faster. If the previous step did not work, users could go to the advanced tab to set the gas price manually.
What is nonce in proof of work?
Nonce is the central part of this Proof of Work.
The Nonce is a random whole number, which is a 32-bit (4 byte) field, which is adjusted by the miners, so that it becomes a valid number to be used for hashing the value of block.
Does Ethereum use nonce?
In Ethereum, every transaction has a nonce. The nonce is the number of transactions sent from a given address. In English, a nonce is a number that can only be used once.
Does nonce prevent double spending?
Avoiding double spend means to stop using the same amount twice. If the nonce is set to the same only one of the transactions will be mined and most of the time that can be the one with higher gas price, but however no double spend will happen as only one transaction will take place at the end in either case.
How big is a nonce?
The «nonce» in a bitcoin block is a 32-bit (4-byte) field whose value is adjusted by miners so that the hash of the block will be less than or equal to the current target of the network.
How is nonce calculated?
The miner adds a number (starting from 0), called the nonce, to the block header, and hashes that value. If the hash value isn’t less than the target, the miner will increment the nonce by 1, add it again to the block header, and hash that changed value.
How is nonce generated?
A random nonce is produced by stringing arbitrary numbers together. A sequential nonce is produced incrementally. Using the sequential nonce method guarantees that values are not repeated, cannot be replayed and do not take up unnecessary space.
I use web3 and provider mainnet. I do 2 transactions by contract. first is approve method and another transaction is multitransfer. I store second signature in database. if first transaction is success I send second transaction/. second transaction almost always error nonce too low`. how i can solve this problem
asked Jun 7, 2019 at 9:43
For proper nonce management you have 2 options :
-
Request the nr of transactions confirmed for your address with web3.eth.getTransactionCount(ethAddress), increment, send and wait for receipt before processing the next one. This is very slow if you need to have high-throughput and you are relying on a specific node to be available and to be synced.
-
You maintain your own local counter persisted at the level of the database. Use the DB’s access locks to handle possible concurrent requests and return correct values every time. You do not want to keep this counters in memory as they will be lost if your application crashes or restarts. This is very efficient as you do not need the node and you can send as many transactions as you can dish out. If something goes wrong… (nonce too low) reset to the value of web3.eth.getTransactionCount(ethAddress).
Important Note: You might wonder why not to use web3.eth.getTransactionCount(ethAddress, ‘pending’). This is because the ‘pending’ option makes the call unreliable as its hard for the nodes to have an accurate number of transaction in the queue & the memory pool.
For a better understanding how the nodes look at your message’s nonce. Check this answer here : https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/2808/what-happens-when-a-transaction-nonce-is-too-high/2809#2809
And this one too : Send Raw Transaction Ethereum infura nodejs npm
answered Jun 11, 2019 at 8:34
1
There may be two issues(solutions) here from my understanding;
1) You may have to manually increment nonce for the gas estimation of the multitransfer operations.
2) Some server are pretty slow these days, so either you fetch transactionReceipt(poll) of first transaction before doing the second to be sure that it has been mined. This way you would likely have the right nonce for second transaction. However, if you are lazy to do this, just are reasonable delay between the two transactions.
answered Jun 8, 2019 at 10:37
user618677user618677
4,9096 gold badges23 silver badges24 bronze badges
1
In my case, I specified a private key instead of a public key in write transaction.
answered Sep 17 at 20:49
ШахзодШахзод
1212 silver badges3 bronze badges
There are two scenarios when the oracle sender could start receiving the message like this:
Jun 06 19:32:20 POA_AWS bridge_bridge_senderforeign_1/7bf82289aae5: {"level":50, "time":1559849540490,"msg":"Tx Failed for event Tx 0x659f73508bf4fb595b175945fd8c334072ca28efac8d79f1ee933044f221c516. nonce too low","name":"sender-foreign","eventTransactionHash":"0x659f73508bf4fb595b175945fd8c334072ca28efac8d79f1ee933044f221c516","error":"nonce too low","v":1}
- A validator picked up a low gas price for the transaction and the transaction was dropped out by timeout for the txpool.
- A transaction was sent manually by using the same private key as the bridge validator has.
As soon as the issue happens it is necessary to restart the corresponding validator’s node.
It is necessary to investigate the ability to handle such cases automatically as so the node will recover without an admin intervention.