Improve UX for abandoning transactions and recovering/resending BTC #282

1. 
   mattmill30 commented at 6:17 pm on April 15, 2021: none

   Transaction wasn’t confirmed due to fee being too low, so transaction expired from mempool, and funds are now inaccessible.

   Issue 1: “Abandon transaction” is greyed out without an explanation of how to enable it

   • All about “stuck” transactions and what you can do to fix them doesn’t appear in organic search results for “Bitcoin core Abandon transaction is greyed out”, it can only be found as a reference cited by https://coinapp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004030308-Stuck-Transactions;
   • Additionally, bitcointalk post 1802212 doesn’t emphasise the subsection “How to make a Full RBF transaction > Bitcoin Core” as being the method for simply aborting/cancelling an expired transaction;
   • Further, bitcointalk post 1802212 doesn’t detail whether the wallet should be restarted without -walletbroadcast=0 after “Abandon transaction” is completed but before a new transaction is performed.

   Issue 2: Once the transaction is abandoned, attempts to create a new transaction for the bitcoin fail to be broadcast

   • even after the client was restarted without -walletbroadcast=0 (but without running -zapwallettxes - because bitcointalk post 1802212 states “If [Abandon transaction] fails for some reason, then you can start Bitcoin Core with the -zapwallettxes option to clear all unconfirmed transactions from your wallet.”, attempting to send the bitcoin in a new transaction appear under the Transactions tab as “Unconfirmed” (Status: 0/unconfirmed, in memory pool) and running listtransactions in console returns ‘walletconflicts’ between abandoned and new transactions:

   "address": "1KYaANCnNjtiTA3MJ4E73n7a1iTbzKGf2x",
   "category": "send",
   "amount": -0.00497450,
   "vout": 1,
   "fee": -0.00002550,
   "confirmations": 0,
   "trusted": false,
   "txid": "e203a8ca50c286621b50e8b6f24b6746eb083a12dec0751b45251d3325d6ab3f",
   "walletconflicts": [
     "c890c8cd4b5cf9ac010a81c3a23060595679c869625016396739b4908fe304c1"
   ],
   "time": 1609969857,
   "timereceived": 1609969857,
   "bip125-replaceable": "yes",
   "abandoned": true
   },
   {
   "address": "1dT9h5zGxx43TNZddWvHXPCQLBZuRZZTb",
   "category": "send",
   "amount": -0.00600000,
   "label": "",
   "vout": 0,
   "fee": -0.00002550,
   "confirmations": 0,
   "trusted": false,
   "txid": "e203a8ca50c286621b50e8b6f24b6746eb083a12dec0751b45251d3325d6ab3f",
   "walletconflicts": [
     "c890c8cd4b5cf9ac010a81c3a23060595679c869625016396739b4908fe304c1"
   ],
   "time": 1609969857,
   "timereceived": 1609969857,
   "bip125-replaceable": "yes",
   "abandoned": true
   },
   {
   "address": "bc1qaqpv05s9dnmns50epvy5726svcllrh2ua4jx4t",
   "category": "send",
   "amount": -0.00200000,
   "vout": 1,
   "fee": -0.00000334,
   "confirmations": 0,
   "trusted": true,
   "txid": "c890c8cd4b5cf9ac010a81c3a23060595679c869625016396739b4908fe304c1",
   "walletconflicts": [
     "e203a8ca50c286621b50e8b6f24b6746eb083a12dec0751b45251d3325d6ab3f"
   ],
   "time": 1618495768,
   "timereceived": 1618495768,
   "bip125-replaceable": "yes",
   "abandoned": false
   },
   {
   "address": "17FjUKyydoQ1u44vq2Df47XtcD2rFmdbsd",
   "category": "send",
   "amount": -0.00899666,
   "label": "",
   "vout": 0,
   "fee": -0.00000334,
   "confirmations": 0,
   "trusted": true,
   "txid": "c890c8cd4b5cf9ac010a81c3a23060595679c869625016396739b4908fe304c1",
   "walletconflicts": [
     "e203a8ca50c286621b50e8b6f24b6746eb083a12dec0751b45251d3325d6ab3f"
   ],
   "time": 1618495768,
   "timereceived": 1618495768,
   "bip125-replaceable": "yes",
   "abandoned": false
   }
   

   

   1. Abandoning a transaction is unintuitive,

   • due to having to restart with -walletbroadcast=0 which isn’t detailed anywhere in the client and requires usage of the commandline
     • UX enhancement 1: perhaps introduce a tooltip over the greyed out “Abandon transaction” context-menu entry
     • UX enhancement 2: Introduce GUI/console methods for disabling walletbroadcast: new option under Options > Wallet > Expert, and setwalletbroadcast.

   2. After successfully abandoning the transaction it isn’t clear how abandoned transactions can be deleted, or whether the client needs to be restarted without -walletbroadcast=0 before proceeding to create a replacement transaction

   3. Resending bitcoin from an abandoned transaction creates a transaction which is “Unconfirmed”, even when the client is restarted without -walletbroadcast=0

   • there is no explanation for why a replacement transaction for an abandoned one is considered to be in conflict, or how to resolve the conflict, either by deleting the Abandoned transaction or using -zapwallettxes, or otherwise.

   In addition to the UX issue being addressed programmatically in the client, please would someone also provide instructions on how to proceed in my case?

   Many thanks

   ---

   Bitcoin core: v0.20.1 (official) Operating system: Windows 10 (x64) Blockchain pruned: No

2. hebasto added the label UX on May 1, 2021
3. bitcoin-core deleted a comment on Dec 21, 2021

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UX