Can not send eth on Ropsten using Infura node

Question

I am trying to send some test ether on Ropsten network using Infura but I can not make a transaction. Code works locally with testrpc but not with Infura

var Web3 = require('web3');
var util = require('ethereumjs-util');
var tx = require('ethereumjs-tx');
var lightwallet = require('eth-lightwallet');
var txutils = lightwallet.txutils;



var web3 = new Web3(
    new Web3.providers.HttpProvider('https://ropsten.infura.io/<token>')
    //new Web3.providers.HttpProvider('http://localhost:8545')
);

var address = '0xadaD904F70ec8323fEd1734614d78D2145222322';
var address2 = '0x5858599f16c46fa33238313A412eE9f0491EBef3';
var key = '<KEY>';
var key2 = '<KEY>';
var amount = web3.toWei(1, "ether");
var balance = web3.eth.getBalance(address);

var value = web3.fromWei(balance, 'ether');

console.log(value);

function sendRaw(rawTx) {
    var privateKey = new Buffer(key, 'hex');
    var transaction = new tx(rawTx);
    transaction.sign(privateKey);
    var serializedTx = transaction.serialize().toString('hex');
    web3.eth.sendRawTransaction(
        '0x' + serializedTx, function(err, result) {
            if(err) {
                console.log('error');
                console.log(err);
            } else {
                console.log('success');
                console.log(result);
            }
        });
}


var rawTx = {
    nonce: web3.toHex(web3.eth.getTransactionCount(address)),
    gasLimit: web3.toHex(21000),
    to: address2,
    from:address,
    value: web3.toHex(web3.toBigNumber(amount))

}

sendRaw(rawTx);

As you can notice I am logging ether on address but no matter how many times I send the transaction it stays eq to 1eth.

Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Answer 1

This looks mostly correct, but there are a couple optional tx parameters that might make the difference:

  // EIP 155 chainId - mainnet: 1, ropsten: 3
  chainId: 3,
  gasPrice: "0x9184e72a000", // 10000000000000

Also, the nonce may need to be converted to hexadecimal. The getTransactionCount method returns a javascript number, so you might need to convert that to hex first.

I'd recommend also logging the parameters before you send it out. If you're connecting to a node that is not synchronized, your nonce could be wrong, and that would also fail these transactions.

I see you got one tx out, so that makes me think a wrong nonce could be blocking you. https://testnet.etherscan.io/tx/0x17c6e7e318a181cc729207ebe2bc203b4df71657b845aaf551892f20de42bc62

Answer 2

Can you try printing out the raw serialized transaction and sending it to ropsten directly with CURL?

https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/JSON-RPC#eth_sendrawtransaction

Do you get a txid back?

Answer 3

We experienced a similar issue with an Infura node not being in sync. Since there are multiple Infura nodes behind their load balancer, our getTransactionCount was hitting an out of sync node and returning an incorrect number. Just wanted to flag it as this may save you some time debugging in future situations