# Speed up or cancel a transfer

Transfers the site built signal replace-by-fee (BIP 125). While one is pending, its owner can **speed it up** (the same transaction at a higher fee rate) or **cancel** it (send every source UTXO back where it came from). Both are a prepare with `kind: "speedup"` or `kind: "cancel"` and the pending `txid`, then sign and submit as usual.

```json title="Request"
{
  "kind": "speedup",
  "txid": "6897451c42f02de2594abfdd6a5d4fcf4794a62cbbd9fbec1ec983893ddc5df4",
  "owner": { "payment_address": "…", "payment_public_key": "…", "ordinals_address": "…", "ordinals_public_key": "…" },
  "fee_rate": 12
}
```

## Speed up

The same inputs and outputs; only the change shrinks. When the change cannot pay the higher fee, the server adds plain bitcoin of your payment address. The new fee must be at least the original's fee plus the node's incremental relay fee for the new size, at a rate at least 1 sat/vB above the original's: the summary's `min_fee_rate` says the lowest rate that works. Too low → `replacement_fee_too_low`.

## Cancel

Spends the same source UTXOs, each back 1:1 to the address it came from, plus the original funding. The original tools-fee output is kept (you are not charged twice). A cancel of a transfer that is no longer in the mempool (`dropped`, `unknown`) is a **void**: a signed transaction can resurface until something else spends its inputs, so voiding it is how you make sure it never confirms. A cancel is only prepared where it can save something, judged by what bitcoind's mempool shows at that moment, else 409 `nothing_to_cancel`. A transfer in the mempool (whatever its recorded status) can be cancelled when it pays someone else itself: a cancel, or a speed-up of one, already sends everything home. One out of the mempool can be cancelled (voided) when anything of its chain of replacements pays someone else, since any of them could resurface. A transfer bitcoind refused (`rejected`) was never sent: nothing to cancel.

The records' `actions.cancel` follows one rule: **it never hides a cancel the prepare would allow.** Without asking the mempool for every record, it is shown for every transfer that could still confirm whose chain pays someone else; the prepare then decides, so a pending cancel shows the button but answers `nothing_to_cancel` until it leaves the mempool.

## When it is refused

| Code | Status | Meaning |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `unknown_transfer` | 404 | No transfer with that `txid` was built here. |
| `not_owner` | 422 | The owner addresses are not the transfer's. |
| `not_pending` | 409 | It is confirmed or replaced already. |
| `has_descendants` | 409 | Something spends its outputs already; a replacement would have to pay for those too. |
| `conflict` | 409 | Its inputs are spent by another transaction. |
| `replacement_fee_too_low` | 422 | Raise the fee rate. |

Follow the result with [Get a wallet transfer](https://raresats.net/docs/get-wallet-transfer.md): the original becomes `replaced`, with `replaced_by`.