Unconfirmed transaction - Non(e) standard input

A few hours ago, I created an offline transaction using the offline transaction tool available at: https://www.strongcoin.com/downloads/offlineTransaction.zip

I coped and pasted the resulting transaction into the chain at: http://blockchain.info/pushtx.

The transaction appears to be stuck. It has a high priority but also says "This transaction has a none standard input."

The transaction # is: 5826ae9e76e2edac733bf9633f5b13de3985dc8989d64ba1780e01d7eac76ee2

I did some googling around, but have found no definitive solution. In the meantime, I imported the private key of the sending address into a wallet at blockchain.info (not sure if this can help - it shows that I sent the bitcoins, but the transaction is unconfirmed.).

What should I do? If I wait a few days, will the transaction simple fail & the funds revert back to the sending address? Will sending a second transaction work (possibly after waiting a few day)?

I'm new to the bitcoin thing. I am pretty technical (part of the reason I went for an offline wallet to begin with), and thought I had a firm grasp of what I was doing. As it were, I should have played around more with smaller transactions.

Any suggestions would be very appreciated. Thanks!

Adam

Posted 2014-10-23T08:46:17.703

Reputation: 11

5When a tx doesn't go through and its "spent" output(s) have not been spent by a newer tx what you can actually do is double-spend these output(s) by forming a new tx with these outputs, I would suggest you do this through via the reference client or some other trusted wallet software this time. You should also test your methods in testnet where you don't put your funds at risk. – George Kimionis – 2014-10-23T12:52:41.073

May I suggest Bitcoin Armory? It has a very nice offline wallet tool. – Nick ODell – 2014-10-23T14:58:05.277

Answers

Your transaction has obviously hard time getting accepted by miners, thus it is stuck in the unconfirmed transactions pool. If no miner decides to include it in a block (because it's non-standard), you'll wait forever - it won't automatically "fail".

The best thing you can do is create another transaction spending the same outputs, this time with standard inputs though (use BitcoinCore client if unsure). It will be picked up by the miners quickly.

Jozef

Posted 2014-10-23T08:46:17.703

Reputation: 1 374

Your tool for creating raw transactions has a bug. It encodes DER-signature to wrong format.

Have a look to these bytes (I added some extra spaces)

3044
0220 d034c6cd1aa5590a7d5dac9143d794c49953dd78083a746c9888bbe1020e0b4c
0220 a104832606c509a77543b5889c3940df22fc888aa3240c43ae1e99f6959fea87 01

These numbers should be encoded as signed positives, not as negative! Modern bitcoin nodes do not accept/relay/mine such transactions. But you can manually fix this raw transaction.

replace 4730440220d034 with 493046022100d034
replace 0220a104 with 022100a104

What should I do? If I wait a few days, will the transaction simple fail & the funds revert back to the sending address?

Yes.

Will sending a second transaction work (possibly after waiting a few day)?

Yes. But you should create your second transaction with the fixed tool :)

amaclin

Posted 2014-10-23T08:46:17.703

Reputation: 5 763

Many thanks to everyone that responded. Your time is most appreciated.

To reiterate, here's the plan of attack:

Wait a few days
Submit a second transaction using a reliable tool (I have both Bitcoin Core & Bitcoin Armory on my machine).

One final question: Will it matter if the second transaction sends to a different address than the first transaction? The intended recipient has multiple receiving addresses, and I'm also considering first sending the funds back to myself (at a different address) just for some reassurance (although probably for no good reason). – Adam – 2014-10-23T18:29:30.357

You may submit second (doublespending) transaction any time you want, any amount, to any address. – amaclin – 2014-10-23T18:48:19.457

So I might as well try to doublespend now rather than waiting a few days? – Adam – 2014-10-23T19:02:34.120

Yes. But you should send doublespend transaction in different way. Not through bc.i – amaclin – 2014-10-23T19:04:39.470

That is to say, don't submit it on blockchain.info, but using Bitcoin Core or Bitcoin Armory should work? – Adam – 2014-10-23T19:14:40.297

You may try to submit doublespend tx even to bc.i . But there will be an error message something like "Inputs already spent" while bc.i keeps the first tx – amaclin – 2014-10-24T03:38:16.433