How to properly set nonce in a web3 contract invocation?

Question

I have this code, which works:

MyToken.airdrop(wallets,amounts,{
  gas: 1267051,
  gasPrice: 2000000000,
},function(err,tx){
  console.log('err is %s',err)
  console.log('tx is %s',tx)
  callback(err,tx)
})

Now Let's say I want to control the nonce myself (reason here) so I do:

MyToken.airdrop(wallets,amounts,{
  gas: 1267051,
  gasPrice: 2000000000,
  nonce: 432 // = web3.eth.getTransactionCount() + 1
},function(err,tx){
  console.log('err is %s',err)
  console.log('tx is %s',tx)
  callback(err,tx)
})

I get a tx hash as output, not an error, yet the transaction can't be found on the appropriate etherscan, it seems to never get sent to the network. Tried on Rinkeby, Ropsten, and Kovan.

What could be the problem with specifying nonce myself or the way I'm doing it?

Note: I'm using infura as the "node".

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 03 '18 at 19:35

9

Apparently there's a nuance with the nonce... my error was I was setting the nonce to web3.eth.getTransactionCount() + 1, which left a gap between prior transaction nonce and next transaction nonce (nonces are 0 indexed, transactions are indexed from 1, that's the root of the error). It so appears that you are not allowed to increment the nonce by 2 and leave a gap. Must be sequential.

edited Jul 03 '18 at 19:35

Vignesh Karthikeyan

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answered Jul 03 '18 at 14:10

shaharsol

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You are allowed to send a tx with a nonce too high, but it will not be mined before the gap is filled. And you have to trust the miners to keep the high-nonce-tx in their tx pool while you fill the gap. – Xavier Leprêtre B9lab Jul 03 '18 at 16:02
Good catch! didn't know of the discrepancy in indexing. – Vignesh Karthikeyan Jul 03 '18 at 18:06
would be great to see the working code in your answer. – Senju Dec 10 '19 at 14:00

How to properly set nonce in a web3 contract invocation?

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