Estimating gas fee of an ERC20 token transfer returns "gas required exceeds allowance or always failing transaction"

[chess-equality]

Bug title

As with the title, I'm getting the error "gas required exceeds allowance or always failing transaction".

Steps To Reproduce

I'm trying to use Transaction.createContractTransaction along with web3j.ethEstimateGas to estimate the gas fee (I'm using Kotlin by the way):

val function = Function(MyToken.FUNC_TRANSFER, listOf(Address(destination), Uint256(amount)), emptyList())
val txData: String = FunctionEncoder.encode(function)

logger.info(">>>>>>>>>> txData = $txData")

val ethGasPrice: EthGasPrice = web3j.ethGasPrice().sendAsync().get()
val transaction: Transaction = Transaction.createContractTransaction(
        credentials.address,
        nonce,
        ethGasPrice.gasPrice,
        DefaultGasProvider.GAS_LIMIT,
        amount,
        txData)

val ethEstimateGas = web3j.ethEstimateGas(transaction).sendAsync().get()

Expected behavior

I should get the estimated gas fee.

Environment

Describe the environment in which the issue occurs

• Web3j version: 4.5.5
• Java or Android version: GraalVM 19.2.1 (JDK 1.8.0_232)
• Operating System: Linux Lite 4.6

[rach-id]

Hello, Instead of using the createContractTransaction, use the createFunctionCallTransaction. The code should look something like that

    val transaction = Transaction.createFunctionCallTransaction(credentials.address,
        BigInteger.ONE,  ethGasPrice.gasPrice, DefaultGasProvider.GAS_LIMIT, contractAddress, BigInteger.valueOf(10000000000), txData)

[AlexandrouR]

@chess-equality is this still an issue?