There are four common errors you might encounter with failed transactions. You can view your transaction on Etherscan and check the Status row to see why the transaction failed.
- Reverted: this is the most common error when purchasing an NFT. The failure refers to the loss of the transaction (gas) fee, not the value of the item you attempted to purchase. In this situation, it’s usually the person who paid the most gas who will get to buy the item. This can happen if multiple users are attempting to purchase the same item at the same time.
If another user is already in the purchase flow for an item, you’ll see the message “Item has a pending transaction.”
- Dropped and Replaced: this means the transaction was dropped and replaced by a new one. For more information, you can refer to this Etherscan help article.
- Out of gas: this occurs when the gas limit of your transaction was set too low. Default gas limit settings for transactions are automatically calibrated on crypto wallets like MetaMask. Changing these gas limit settings may increase the chances of a failed transaction. It's important to check websites like ETH Gas Station before confirming a transaction. If gas prices are too high, you can also use Polygon to create, buy, and sell NFTs without paying any gas fees.
- Pending: sometimes Ethereum transactions can get stuck in a "pending" state when the transaction has been submitted with a low gas price. While fixing this error will vary by wallet provider, here's MetaMask's guide.
