sendRawTransaction is not being sent to the network

Question

I'm using web3 to transfer tokens between two wallets. I'm successfully generating and signing the transaction, a hash is being created, but is never updated to the network. I am using the Rinkeby test network. GETH is showing the transactions being created. I've waited several hours for the transactions, one of which I've waited over 24 hours so far.

Here's the raw transaction data before signing it and converting it to a hex string:

{ 
    from: '0x1A9c7...',
    to: '0xaed2df...',
    nonce: '0x10',
    gasPrice: '0x5208',
    gasLimit: '0x670aac',
    value: '0x00',
    data: '0xa9059cbb0000000000...',
    chainId: 4 
}

Here's the code I'm using to generate the transaction, please note that web3legacy is 0.20.x and web3 is 1.0.0-beta20

let sendTransaction = async () => {
        const senderAddress = "0x1A9c7c...";
        const destinationAddress = "0x2aABeb...";
        const transferAmount = 100;
        const nonce = web3legacy.eth.getTransactionCount(senderAddress);

        const rawTransaction = {
            from: senderAddress,
            to: contractAddress,
            nonce: web3legacy.toHex(nonce),
            gasPrice: web3legacy.toHex(web3legacy.eth.estimateGas({from: senderAddress, to: destinationAddress, amount: web3legacy.toWei(0, "ether")})),
            gasLimit: web3legacy.toHex((await web3.eth.getBlock("latest")).gasLimit),
            value: "0x00",
            data: contract.transfer.getData(destinationAddress, transferAmount, { from: senderAddress }),
            chainId: 4
        };


        // senderAddress private_key
        const privateKeySnapshot = await walletsRef.child(senderAddress).once('value');
        const rawPrivateKey = privateKeySnapshot.val();
        const privateKey = new Buffer(rawPrivateKey, "hex");
        const transaction = new Transaction(rawTransaction);
        transaction.sign(privateKey);

        console.log("Validation:", transaction.validate());
        const serializedTransaction = transaction.serialize();

        web3legacy.eth.sendRawTransaction('0x' + serializedTransaction.toString("hex"), (err, hash) => {
            if(err) console.error("ERROR:", err);
            else {
                console.log("HASH:", hash);
            }
        });
    };

The validation from transaction.validate() is successful.

The hash is created from the sendRawTransaction method but it never appears on the rinkeby network, and my wallet/tokens are never affected. I get the common error message "Sorry, we are unable to locate that Transaction Hash" from rinkeby etherscan.

For anyone curious, sendSignedTransaction in 1.0.0 is currently bugged and doesn't work per issue #1102 which is why I brought in 0.20.0 to send a raw transaction

Answer 1

Your gas price is far too low. It should be at least 20 gwei (20000000000). The problem is that you're using estimateGas, which tells you how much gas you need, to come up with a gas price, which is how much ether you will pay per gas unit.

Similarly, your gasLimit is very high, but that's not a huge deal, since (assuming your call succeeds) you'll be refunded the excess. You could use estimateGas there, but be sure to estimate for your actual call, not a zero ether transfer.