Encyclopedia Ethereum · Entry 103
Reverted Ethereum transactions: failed execution and paid gas
In this article
At a glance
Key facts
| Fact | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Rollback | REVERT discards the reverted execution’s state changes and logs. | [1] |
| Remaining gas | REVERT does not inherently consume every remaining gas unit. | [1] |
| Receipt | A zero receipt status identifies top-level failure. | [4] |
Why failure still has a cost
Nodes performed computation before discovering the failure. The transaction pays for consumed gas even though the attempted contract-state changes are discarded. An out-of-gas failure and an explicit REVERT do not necessarily consume the same amount.
Suppose an illustrative failed attempt consumes 40,000 gas at 20 gwei per gas. Its execution-gas cost is 800,000 gwei, or 0.0008 ETH. This is not a transfer of the requested token amount to the recipient.
A subcall can fail without failing everything
A contract may make another call and inspect whether it succeeded. If it handles failure and continues, the receipt can report success for the overall transaction while the failed subcall’s effects are absent.
Read traces and application-specific results when a success badge seems inconsistent with the expected outcome. A receipt does not describe every nested execution decision.
A retry is a new decision
An included failed transaction has already used its nonce. A retry normally uses the next available transaction nonce and must address the original failure condition.
Increasing a fee cannot fix an expired deadline, a missing allowance or a contract condition that rejects the operation. Identify the error and current state before constructing another attempt.
Direct answers
Questions people ask
Will raising the gas limit always make a failed transaction work?
No. A higher limit may help an actual gas shortage, but it cannot make a contract’s required authorization, balance, deadline or other logical condition become true.
Inspect the evidence
The answer and key facts have stable claim links. These records retain the scope and qualification when reused.
A reverted Ethereum transaction rolls back its execution’s state changes, but the included attempt still consumes gas and the sender’s transaction nonce. REVERT can preserve unused gas; it does not refund work already performed. A failed internal call can also be caught by a contract while the enclosing transaction succeeds.
Scope: Ethereum · data through 2026-10-02. Verification: verified · 2026-10-02T18:12:41.505Z.
Link to this claimRollback: REVERT discards the reverted execution’s state changes and logs.
Scope: Ethereum · data through 2026-10-02. Verification: verified · 2026-10-02T18:12:41.505Z.
Link to this claimRemaining gas: REVERT does not inherently consume every remaining gas unit.
Scope: Ethereum · data through 2026-10-02. Verification: verified · 2026-10-02T18:12:41.505Z.
Link to this claimReceipt: A zero receipt status identifies top-level failure.
Scope: Ethereum · data through 2026-10-02. Verification: verified · 2026-10-02T18:12:41.505Z.
Link to this claimRevision history
- — First publication after primary-source research and independent automated verification.
Source register
Sources and references
Retrieval dates and locators are recorded individually.- REVERT instructionEthereum Improvement Proposals
State rollback and remaining gas behavior for a REVERT instruction.
Locator: Specification · Version / scope: EIP/ERC-140; retrieved document hash recorded · Retrieved: 2026-10-02T17:03:42.150ZOpen source - Ethereum transactionsethereum.org contributors
Signed transaction fields, nonces, propagation, inclusion and transaction types.
Locator: The transaction lifecycle; Typed transaction envelope · Retrieved: 2026-10-02T17:03:41.854ZOpen source - Gas and feesethereum.org contributors
Execution resource units, fee components and gas expenditure.
Locator: What is gas?; Base fee; Priority fee · Retrieved: 2026-10-02T17:03:41.688ZOpen source - Embedding transaction status code in receiptsEthereum Improvement Proposals
Receipts report top-level execution success or failure.
Locator: Specification · Version / scope: EIP/ERC-658; retrieved document hash recorded · Retrieved: 2026-10-02T17:03:42.150ZOpen source - Solidity: Delegatecall and LibrariesSolidity contributors
Execution uses another contract’s code in the caller’s context and storage.
Locator: Delegatecall and Libraries; Storage, Memory and the Stack; Logs; Message Calls · Version / scope: Solidity 0.8.30 documentation · Retrieved: 2026-10-02T17:03:42.822ZOpen source - Ethereum JSON-RPCethereum.org contributors
RPC response fields, transaction receipts, call simulation and log filtering.
Locator: eth_getTransactionByHash; eth_getTransactionReceipt; eth_call; eth_getLogs; eth_getCode; eth_estimateGas; eth_getBalance; eth_getStorageAt; eth_getTransactionCount; default block parameter · Retrieved: 2026-10-02T17:03:42.060ZOpen source - Ethereum accountsethereum.org contributors
Key-controlled and code-controlled accounts, balances, nonces and storage.
Locator: Account types; An account examined; Account creation · Retrieved: 2026-10-02T17:03:41.958ZOpen source
Research and drafting use AI assistance. A separate automated review checks claims against primary sources; no external expert or named human review is implied. Publication, substantive editing, source retrieval and verification are recorded separately. This version was independently checked by an automated reviewer on 2 October 2026.
Editorial method and correctionsDegrees of Satoshi editorial project. “Reverted Ethereum transactions: failed execution and paid gas.” Published 2026-10-02; updated 2026-10-02. https://degreesofsatoshi.com/encyclopedia/ethereum-reverted-transactions/