What does ‘speed-up’ mean in the Metamask wallet?

The "Speed Up" option in a Metamask wallet refers to the ability to increase the gas fee for a pending transaction in order to accelerate its confirmation on the Ethereum network.

When a user sends a transaction on the Ethereum network, they must include a gas fee, which is paid in ether, to incentivize validators to process their transaction. The gas fee is determined by the current network traffic and the user's desired transaction speed to process the transaction.

If a user wants to speed up a pending transaction that is taking too long to confirm, they can use the "Speed Up" option in Metamask to increase the gas fee and prioritize their transaction. This essentially replaces the previous transaction with a new one that has a higher gas fee and therefore a higher likelihood of being processed quickly by the network.

Note that using the "Speed Up" option will result in higher gas fees being paid since the user is essentially creating a new transaction. Therefore, it should only need to be used when there is an urgency to process a transaction quickly to justify the additional cost.