Skip to content

Improve UX for abandoning transactions and recovering/resending BTC #282

Open
@mattmill30

Description

@mattmill30

Transaction wasn't confirmed due to fee being too low, so transaction expired from mempool, and funds are now inaccessible.

Issue 1: "Abandon transaction" is greyed out without an explanation of how to enable it

Issue 2: Once the transaction is abandoned, attempts to create a new transaction for the bitcoin fail to be broadcast

  • even after the client was restarted without -walletbroadcast=0 (but without running -zapwallettxes - because bitcointalk post 1802212 states "If [Abandon transaction] fails for some reason, then you can start Bitcoin Core with the -zapwallettxes option to clear all unconfirmed transactions from your wallet.", attempting to send the bitcoin in a new transaction appear under the Transactions tab as "Unconfirmed" (Status: 0/unconfirmed, in memory pool) and running listtransactions in console returns 'walletconflicts' between abandoned and new transactions:
"address": "1KYaANCnNjtiTA3MJ4E73n7a1iTbzKGf2x",
"category": "send",
"amount": -0.00497450,
"vout": 1,
"fee": -0.00002550,
"confirmations": 0,
"trusted": false,
"txid": "e203a8ca50c286621b50e8b6f24b6746eb083a12dec0751b45251d3325d6ab3f",
"walletconflicts": [
  "c890c8cd4b5cf9ac010a81c3a23060595679c869625016396739b4908fe304c1"
],
"time": 1609969857,
"timereceived": 1609969857,
"bip125-replaceable": "yes",
"abandoned": true
},
{
"address": "1dT9h5zGxx43TNZddWvHXPCQLBZuRZZTb",
"category": "send",
"amount": -0.00600000,
"label": "",
"vout": 0,
"fee": -0.00002550,
"confirmations": 0,
"trusted": false,
"txid": "e203a8ca50c286621b50e8b6f24b6746eb083a12dec0751b45251d3325d6ab3f",
"walletconflicts": [
  "c890c8cd4b5cf9ac010a81c3a23060595679c869625016396739b4908fe304c1"
],
"time": 1609969857,
"timereceived": 1609969857,
"bip125-replaceable": "yes",
"abandoned": true
},
{
"address": "bc1qaqpv05s9dnmns50epvy5726svcllrh2ua4jx4t",
"category": "send",
"amount": -0.00200000,
"vout": 1,
"fee": -0.00000334,
"confirmations": 0,
"trusted": true,
"txid": "c890c8cd4b5cf9ac010a81c3a23060595679c869625016396739b4908fe304c1",
"walletconflicts": [
  "e203a8ca50c286621b50e8b6f24b6746eb083a12dec0751b45251d3325d6ab3f"
],
"time": 1618495768,
"timereceived": 1618495768,
"bip125-replaceable": "yes",
"abandoned": false
},
{
"address": "17FjUKyydoQ1u44vq2Df47XtcD2rFmdbsd",
"category": "send",
"amount": -0.00899666,
"label": "",
"vout": 0,
"fee": -0.00000334,
"confirmations": 0,
"trusted": true,
"txid": "c890c8cd4b5cf9ac010a81c3a23060595679c869625016396739b4908fe304c1",
"walletconflicts": [
  "e203a8ca50c286621b50e8b6f24b6746eb083a12dec0751b45251d3325d6ab3f"
],
"time": 1618495768,
"timereceived": 1618495768,
"bip125-replaceable": "yes",
"abandoned": false
}

image

  1. Abandoning a transaction is unintuitive,
  • due to having to restart with -walletbroadcast=0 which isn't detailed anywhere in the client and requires usage of the commandline
    • UX enhancement 1: perhaps introduce a tooltip over the greyed out "Abandon transaction" context-menu entry
    • UX enhancement 2: Introduce GUI/console methods for disabling walletbroadcast: new option under Options > Wallet > Expert, and setwalletbroadcast.
  1. After successfully abandoning the transaction it isn't clear how abandoned transactions can be deleted, or whether the client needs to be restarted without -walletbroadcast=0 before proceeding to create a replacement transaction

  2. Resending bitcoin from an abandoned transaction creates a transaction which is "Unconfirmed", even when the client is restarted without -walletbroadcast=0

  • there is no explanation for why a replacement transaction for an abandoned one is considered to be in conflict, or how to resolve the conflict, either by deleting the Abandoned transaction or using -zapwallettxes, or otherwise.

In addition to the UX issue being addressed programmatically in the client, please would someone also provide instructions on how to proceed in my case?

Many thanks


Bitcoin core: v0.20.1 (official)
Operating system: Windows 10 (x64)
Blockchain pruned: No

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    UXAll about "how to get things done"

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions