Simulating transactions on Ganache v7 fork throws insufficient funds error

hey there, appreciate your work on this amazing tool! when trying to integrate the latest version (ganache 7.0.0) into my previously working code (which used ganache-core 2.13.2) I am seeing some non-deterministic behaviour. Sometimes when simulating a transaction on a fork it will throw an insufficient funds for intrinsic transaction cost error. But other times, running the exact same code will work as expected. Here is what I am doing:

const provider = new ethers.providers.Web3Provider(ganache.provider({
    fork: {
      url: MY_INFURA_URL,
      blockNumber: SOME_BLOCK_NUMBER
    },
    wallet: {
      unlockedAccounts: [USER_ADDRESS]
    }
  }) as any)
const tetherContract = new ethers.Contract(TETHER_ADDRESS, TETHER_ABI, provider.getSigner(USER_ADDRESS))
const userTetherBalance = await tetherContract.balanceOf(USER_ADDRESS)
const tx = await tetherContract.transfer(USER2_ADDRESS, userTetherBalance) //<---- throws error here

[haseebrabbani]

Appreciate the explanation! However, since this code will be client-facing I wouldn’t want to use this workaround (and possibly link to this issue in a comment to explain why I’m setting maxFeePerGas). As such, I will hold off on integrating Ganache v7 and stick to ganache-core for the time being until a longer-term fix is implemented. Ideally, since users did not have to set this parameter before, they shouldn’t have to set it in the latest version either

[MicaiahReid]

Hi @haseebrabbani, we did some looking into this and think there’s a combination of factors contributing to the issue. If you change your transfer call to include a maxFeePerGas, as follows:

const tx = await tetherContract.transfer(
  USER2_ADDRESS,
  userTetherBalance,
  { maxFeePerGas: 90417983619 }
);

all of the transfers work. Whenever you fork from a block, the new “latest” block is used to set the baseFeePerGas of the next block. When no gas information is specified on a transaction, the default base fee is set by Ganache. This is an expensive gas premium because it ensures it will make it onto the block - but you’re overspending on gas in that case. So, this was leading to insufficient funds to perform the transfer.

We plan to improve upon this in a number of ways:

• add the eth_feeHistory RPC method to help set those parameters (#1470)
• add the option to set a configurable, static baseFeePerGas #1573

@haseebrabbani Let me know if the above fix doesn’t work for you and we can investigate further. If it does work, feel free to close this issue!