First, confirm anything is actually stuck

Half the "my transaction is stuck!" panics I get sent are display bugs. Base and Arbitrum produce blocks every couple of seconds and don't keep a long waiting mempool the way Ethereum does, so most transactions confirm or fail within seconds. Before you touch anything, copy the transaction hash from your wallet and paste it into Basescan or Arbiscan. The explorer is ground truth:

Success but your wallet still spins — the RPC endpoint your wallet uses is lagging. Switch the network back and forth, or reload; nothing needs fixing on-chain.
Reverted/Failed — it wasn't stuck, it failed, and yes, you paid the gas. That's a different problem with different fixes; the failed transaction guide covers the five causes and how to read the revert.
Pending, or not found at all after several minutes — this guide applies.

Restarting the browser or app before anything more exotic is also worth doing — MetaMask themselves recommend it as step one, because a locked-up UI can fail to show a confirmation that already happened.

Why an L2 transaction goes pending in the first place

A transaction stays pending when its gas bid is unattractive relative to current demand, or when the network's inclusion machinery is briefly backed up. On Ethereum mainnet that means a mempool auction your transaction can sit in for hours. On Base and Arbitrum the picture is different: a centralized sequencer normally includes valid transactions almost immediately, so long pendings usually trace to one of three things — you (or your wallet) underpriced the fee on a busy day, the sequencer is briefly congested during a viral mint or a network incident, or the transaction was broadcast to a lagging RPC and never actually propagated.

The practical takeaway: don't resubmit the same transaction out of impatience. That's how a one-transaction annoyance becomes a queue. First learn how the queue works.

The nonce: why one stuck transaction blocks everything behind it

Every account numbers its transactions in strict sequence with a nonce — your first is 0, then 1, then 2, and the chain processes them exactly in order. If nonce 42 is pending, nonce 43 and 44 cannot confirm first, no matter how much gas they offer. They're queued behind 42 by protocol rule. This is why clicking "swap" three more times doesn't push the first one through — it just adds 43, 44, and 45 to the traffic jam.

That same mechanism is also the escape hatch. A nonce can only be used once, so if you submit a second transaction with the same nonce 42 and pay enough gas to be mined first, the network includes the newcomer and drops the original. Every replacement technique in this guide — speed up and cancel alike — is just that idea applied carefully. Always start the rescue from the oldest pending nonce; clearing 43 while 42 is stuck changes nothing.

Option A: speed it up (when you still want the transaction)

If the pending transaction does what you want — a swap, a send, an approval — use your wallet's built-in replacement rather than building one by hand. MetaMask's Activity view shows a Speed up button on the pending entry (on recent extension versions, open the "Transaction submitted" notification); Rabby has the equivalent in its transaction history. The wallet resubmits the identical transaction — same nonce, same calldata — with a higher gas fee. You pay only the replacement transaction's fee, not twice, and the original simply never lands.

Pick the "Aggressive"/"High" preset rather than nudging the fee by 10%, especially on a genuinely busy day: a replacement that underbids again just leaves you pending twice. On Base and Arbitrum the absolute difference between economy and aggressive fees is usually a few cents at most, so this is not the place to optimize.

Option B: cancel it with a zero-value self-send

If the transaction is wrong — you changed your mind, the slippage setting is off, or the approval was going to a contract you no longer trust — replace it with a no-op. You send 0 ETH to your own address using the stuck transaction's nonce and a higher fee. The network mines the harmless replacement, marks the nonce used, and the original is dropped; your funds move nowhere. The exact seven-step flow is in the step-by-step box above.

Modern MetaMask also has a one-tap Cancel button that builds this replacement for you — try it first, and fall back to the custom-nonce method when the button is grayed out or the wallet version doesn't offer it. Note the asymmetry: a cancel still pays gas (you're buying inclusion for the replacement). Cancellation is free only if the original transaction is simply dropped by the network without replacement, which on L2s can also happen on its own if the fee was far enough below market.

Multiple stuck transactions, and the Reset Account button

If a whole queue piled up before you found this guide, work oldest first: cancel or speed up the lowest pending nonce, confirm it lands, then move to the next. Same-nonce replacements can clear multiple stuck entries at once if — somehow — several broadcasts share one nonce, but the normal case is a tidy sequence that must be unwound in order.

When a wallet's local state is clearly wrong — it shows pending entries the explorer says were dropped or replaced hours ago — MetaMask's Reset Account (Account → Advanced → Clear activity tab data) wipes the local transaction history and nonce tracking so the UI resyncs to the chain. It does not touch your balances or keys. Use it only after the explorer confirms there's nothing real pending, or you'll lose visibility on transactions that actually exist.

What this rescue actually costs on an L2

This is the nicest part of doing this on Base or Arbitrum instead of mainnet. Replacement transactions, speed-ups, and zero-value cancels all cost the same thing as any other transaction — network gas at the higher fee you chose. On L2s in 2026 that's typically under five cents, often under one. The same operation on Ethereum during congestion can cost $5–20 and still not confirm if your replacement is timid. The economics are inverted: on mainnet people sometimes just wait because the cancel is expensive; on an L2 there's no reason to wait.

One trap specific to token transactions: if the stuck transaction is an ERC-20 transfer or swap and you cancel it, any unused approval you granted in an earlier transaction still stands — cancelling nonce 42 doesn't revoke approvals confirmed under earlier nonces. If the approval went to something suspicious, revoke it separately with a token-approval tool afterward.

While you wait, the two things never to do

First, never broadcast fresh transactions hoping they'll "push through" — they can't jump the nonce queue, they just make the queue longer. Second, the moment a pending transaction drags on, DMs and search ads fill with "support" offering to unstick it for a fee or asking you to connect your wallet to a "rescue" site. There is no service that can unstick your transaction through a website connection, no support agent who needs your seed phrase, and no reason to enter anything into a form. The entire legitimate toolkit is the two buttons in your own wallet, plus the custom-nonce flow above.

For the future, prevention is boring and effective: check the live tracker before large or time-sensitive sends, accept the wallet's aggressive fee preset on visibly busy days instead of hand-cutting it, and keep your RPC on a reliable endpoint — the gwei guide shows what the fee numbers actually mean, and the data on cheap hours helps you avoid the queue entirely most days.

Stuck Pending Transaction on Base or Arbitrum? How to Speed It Up or Cancel It, Same-Nonce Method