Transaction Failure

    Analyzing failed transactions on Terra.

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    Introduction

    The Terra blockchain, like any other decentralized network, presents the possibility of transactional failure. Failed transactions may either be due to network issues or the human factor.

    On March 17, 2022, this tweet https://twitter.com/alphaDefi_/status/1504522066674003972/photo/1 was of the assertion that failed transactions on the Terra network have been on the rise lately.

    The purpose of this dashboard is to assess whether the claim made in the tweet above is actually true and what factor(s) is responsible for rise in failed transactions.

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    Transaction Status Breakdown

    We begin by getting the monthly breakdown of Terra's failed transactions over the last 6 months which is observed in the chart below. Basically, this gets us the failed transaction rate to compare with the graph presented in the tweet above.

    The black line shows the percentage of failed transactions over time, and it is obvious that it seems to be on a gentle slope. The all-time high (ATH) according to data from flipsidecrypto was 3.0% in April 2021. The recent high in March 2022 stands at 2.4%. This data does not correlate with what was posted on the tweet above which suggested failed Terra transactions to be higher than 3.5%

    Moving on, we want to know the factors that are responsible for these failed transactions. With the donut chart below, observe Terra's failed transactions by transaction type. By knowing the transaction type with the most failures, we can have a fair idea of the cause of failure.

    Conclusion

    In this dashboard, we have assessed the claim that failed Terra transactions are currently on the rise. Although the assertion made by the tweet is inaccurate.

    Data from flipsidecrypto suggest that ATH failure-rate for Terra transactions have not moved past 3.1% for any single month, yet the tweet claims the current failed transaction rate is at almost 4%.

    In conclusion, failed Terra transactions are on the rise but not as astronomical as it was made to seem from the tweet.

    For the past 6 months, the transaction type with the most failure has been MsgExecuteContract with a 58.2% share. MsgExecuteContract is a transaction type associated with smart contracts on Terra. This means that smart contracts are responsible for the majority of the transaction failures on Terra.

    Now, what are some of the factors that might cause a smart contract call to fail? Among the lot, we can think of the following:

    • Low or insufficient gas fees
    • Insufficient transaction fees
    • Invalid parameters
    • Network error