Ethereum user pays $2.6M fee to send $130 in digital currency

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On June 10, an Ethereum user sent a transaction worth $130 with a $2.6 million transaction fee attached to it. The next day, June 11, the same user sent a transaction worth $84,000 with a $2.6 million transaction fee attached to it. The fees attached to these transactions is roughly 2,000,000% and 3,000%  more than the value transferred, respectively. 

Was it a typo?

The transaction contained 0.55 ETH (worth roughly 132.28 at press time), a transaction fee of 10,668.73185 ETH (worth roughly $2,569,457.38 at press time), and was sent to a digital currency wallet on the Bithumb exchange. The transaction was processed by the Ethereum pool SparkPool, and many people, including the team at SparkPool, believe that this abnormally high tx fee transaction was sent by mistake. 

We are further investigating the incident of unusually high tx fee, and you are welcome to provide clues to [email protected]. SparkPool has had the experience of handling similar issues properly. There will be a solution in the end. https://t.co/mZc49Q0Y4r

— SparkPool (@sparkpool_eth) June 10, 2020

SparkPool says they are investigating the transaction and are willing to work out a solution with the sender of the transaction. This indicates that SparkPool believes the $2.6 million transaction fee was not intentionally included, and that they are willing to refund the sender in some capacity. At the moment, SparkPool has frozen this transaction so that the $2.6 million fee cannot be distributed among SparkPool miners.

The June 11 transaction contained 350 ETH (worth roughly $84,294.00 at press time), a transaction fee of 10,668.73185 ETH (worth roughly $2,569,457.38 at press time), and was sent by the same wallet address involved in the June 10th transaction. The transaction was processed by Ethermine Pool, who similar to the SparkPool team believes that this abnormally high tx fee transaction was sent by a mistake.

Today our Ethermine ETH pool mined a transaction with a ~10.000 ETH fee (https://t.co/B5gRWOrcPf). We believe that this was an accident and in order to resolve this issue the tx sender should contact us at via DM or our support portal at https://t.co/JgwX4tGYr4 immediately! pic.twitter.com/sWxVRx5muv

— Bitfly (@etherchain_org) June 11, 2020

 

This isn’t the first time

Although this issue is new to the Ethermine Pool team, this is not the first time that SparkPool has processed an ETH transaction with an unusually high transaction fee attached. 

Ooooooooops!

Looks like some poor dev just paid 3,150 ETH ($450k) in transaction fees.https://t.co/IAHU3ylY33https://t.co/6LEA3smeOJhttps://t.co/M0LztSyWo7

— Mati Greenspan (@MatiGreenspan) February 19, 2019

On February 19, 2019, a transaction was sent over the Ethereum network where 0.1 ETH was being transferred (worth roughly $25 at press time) that had a 2,100 ETH transaction fee attached to it (worth roughly 512,000 at press time).

In that instance, it turned out the sender—a South Korean blockchain firm—had accidentally included the high transaction fee. When SparkPool became aware that the abnormally high transaction fee was a mistake on the sender’s behalf, SparkPool and the South Korean firm were able to come to a resolution. SparkPool decided to return half of the 2,100 transaction fee to the sender, and the sender let SparkPool keep the other half since they were willing to help them recoup their loss.