Why is my hardware wallet failing to sign a transaction?

Your hardware wallet may appear to freeze, time out, or lock itself while signing a transaction.

Hardware wallets like Ledgers, Trezors, and Coldcards are electronic devices with limited memory and processing power. In most cases, these hardware wallets can sign transactions with minimal delay. However, some limitations may introduce delays or prevent your hardware wallet from signing. If you’re encountering these issues, you can view our guide on how to solve them.

The amount of bitcoin that you’re sending does not matter. The amount of data (in bytes) contained in the transaction determines the signing difficulty.

Factors that negatively affect your hardware wallet:

1. You may have a large number of UTXOs.

You can read an explanation of UTXOs on our blog: What is a bitcoin UTXO?

Signing too many UTXOs at a time can overwhelm your hardware wallet. You can check the number of UTXOs in your vault by clicking View details on your vault page.

As a rule of thumb, transactions with ten or fewer UTXOs should only take a few seconds for your hardware wallet. Transactions involving 25+ UTXOs may take a couple of minutes or longer for your hardware wallet to sign. Please leave your hardware wallet plugged into your computer and be patient while it works.

2. Your UTXOs may come from F2Pool or ViaBTC mining pools.

Bitcoin deposits carry forward a small amount of data that refers back to its last transaction. This extra “signing mass” data doesn’t increase your transaction fee but still needs to be processed by your hardware wallet. 

Mining pools, particularly F2Pool and ViaBTC, often send bitcoin to hundreds or thousands of people at once. These transactions are complex, and the resulting UTXOs are more difficult for your hardware wallet to process.