Why is my transaction pending?

Is your crypto transaction pending? Read on to understand why we sometimes label your incoming transactions as Pending within the wallet.

In this article:

What does pending mean?

Incoming transactions show up in your account right away (typically within a minute after they are broadcast) but will be tagged as Pending until there has been at least one network confirmation. The time it takes a transaction to be confirmed depends on the fee used by the sender and the overall network traffic. It can also depend on the asset used.

Once a transaction is verified on the network, the pending tag will be removed. This lets you know the transaction cannot be reversed and the funds can be sent.

What is actually happening with a pending transaction?

This verification process is similar to the 2-3 day hold traditional banks put on check deposits waiting for funds to clear. Digital asset networks have a similar system except the time spent waiting is reduced to hours (and sometimes even minutes with faster networks like Ethereum) instead of days.

Occasionally, transactions are not accepted by the network and remain marked as Pending for 2-3 days. Typically these transactions will never confirm. These problem transactions are typically caused by three main reasons:

• Receiving a transaction with insufficient fees.
  All transactions require a miner fee to be confirmed by the asset network. If the sender did not use a sufficient fee, your deposit might never confirm.
• Spending unconfirmed assets.
  If you are trying to send assets that appear as pending in your account, your transaction will also remain in a pending state until your deposits are confirmed. You can think of this as a waterfall effect. Until the funds you receive are properly confirmed, all of your sent funds will be marked with this same pending state.
• The network is experiencing a high volume.
  Sometimes there is a high volume of digital currency being sent globally, and there are more transactions than there is space available in each new block to include the transaction.

Transactions that do not get confirmed by the network are dropped from being processed and returned to the sender. If you have a dropped transaction in your wallet that continues to show as pending, you can often manually remove this by refreshing your wallet. A refresh updates your wallet to the latest information from the network.

How long do I have to wait for a pending transaction?

Asset
Typical time pending 

Bitcoin
60 minutes or less

Monero
20 minutes or less

Dash
15 minutes or less

BNB
5 minutes or less

Ethereum
5 minutes or less

Cardano
5 minutes or less

Solana
5 minutes or less

What does a pending transaction look like in my wallet?

In Desktop, pending transactions will have a Pending tag in the transaction details.

In Mobile, pending transactions will have a
Pending tag above transaction details.