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What causes an INVALID_TRANSACTION_START when submitting a transaction to Hedera

I am receiving the following error when I submit a transaction to Hedera:

failed precheck with status INVALID_TRANSACTION_START

This hasn't happened to me before and I'm confused.

Why is this error happening?

screenshot of error described above

Solution

  • INVALID_TRANSACTION_START is returned if your device clock is ahead of time. As transactions include the valid start time (it's in the TransactionId) in the payload the user signs, keeping the device synced with a time server (set date to auto) is the solution for now. The SDK removes a few seconds from the client's time to take into account minor time differences.

    There have been suggestions of adding an API to Hedera enabling the query of a node's time and using this instead of the client's clock. The client would use the return value from the query to set its transaction id. This could be an opportunity for a HIP.