How to transfer entire address balance to another address

Question

After going through the questions here and here I came up with the code below to transfer the entire balance from one address to another using web3.js.

export async function sendTransaction(
  secretKey: string,
  amount: number,
  to?: string
) {
  try {
    const wallet = new ethers.Wallet(secretKey, provider);
    const valueAfterGas = amount - gasLimit;
    const gasPrice = await web3.eth.getGasPrice();
const tx = await wallet.sendTransaction({
  to: to,
  value: valueAfterGas,
  gasLimit: gasLimit * Number(gasPrice),
});

return tx;

} catch (error) {
    log(No transaction for ${amount} to ${to});
    errorHandler(error);
  }
}

This code doesn't work and I get RPC errors saying -

Error: cannot estimate gas; transaction may fail or may require manual gas limit

Error: processing response error

How can this be fixed? I am using web3 version 4.4, if your solution requires a different version I can downgrade if it can be specified.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 11 '24 at 21:59

You miscalculate the valueAfterGas and the gasLimit.

gasLimit has nothing to do with the price. It defines how much gas will be consumed in the transaction. For ETH transfer this value is: 21000
valueAfterGas = amount - gasLimit * gasPrice; (gasPrice is per 1 GAS unit)
you should pass your gasPrice to the transaction.

const tx = await wallet.sendTransaction({
   to: to,
   value: amount - gasLimit * gasPrice,
   gasPrice: gasPrice,
   gasLimit: gasLimit,
});

How to transfer entire address balance to another address

1 Answers1