Transaction fails when using skipPreflight: true

Question

Sending and confirming a transaction works for me only using skipPreflight=false.

As soon as i set skipPreflight=true the transaction does not come through and confirmation fails with:

TransactionExpiredBlockheightExceededError: Signature XXX has expired: block height exceeded.

Code for sending and confirming is

const transaction = new VersionedTransaction(messageV0);
transaction.sign([wallet, ...innerTransaction.signers]);

const signature = await solanaConnection.sendRawTransaction(
  transaction.serialize(),
  {
    // preflightCommitment: COMMITMENT_LEVEL,
    skipPreflight: true, 
  }
);

const confirmStrategy: BlockheightBasedTransactionConfirmationStrategy = {
    blockhash: latestBlockhash.blockhash,
    lastValidBlockHeight: latestBlockhash.lastValidBlockHeight,
    signature: signature
}
const confirmation = await solanaConnection.confirmTransaction(
  confirmStrategy, 
  COMMITMENT_LEVEL
);

Priority fees are the same for both and sufficiently high (i guess? tested with 4M microLamports). Commitment level is processed.

Do nodes prefer transactions that were simulated? I tested it over multiple occasions and every time it fails when skipping preflight.

Answer 1

This might be a coincidence, or a bug that was fixed with https://github.com/anza-xyz/agave/pull/483 -- you can try setting preflightCommitment to processed until the fix rolls out to get your transactions to land more easily while also setting skipPreflight: true