A repeat of a bizarre transaction on the Ethereum network on June 10 has once again been recorded six hours before press time, with the same address with large ETH holdings spending a ridiculous amount in transaction fees for a smaller amount.
A total of 350 Ether (appr. $86,303.00) was sent from the same address as yesterday’s which suggests that it is the same individual or organization. The current funds were sent to a different address with exactly the same transaction fee of 10,668.73185 Ether (appr. $2,630,695.90) also inserted for the transaction as shown in the below screenshot.
As we noted earlier, though, the irreversible nature of blockchain transactions means that there is no way for the sender to receive a refund on-chain.
However, Ethermine, the Ethereum miner that verified the blockchain containing the latest transfer has quickly moved to request that the person behind the transaction reaches out to them via Twitter or email support for a refund.
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
Human error or automated?
The latest reoccurrence of a seemingly human error where transaction fee is mistaken for the send amount has led to speculations that these are automated transactions rather than manual ones.
For one thing, the ETH address responsible for these transactions is very active with more than 100 transactions in the last six hours alone. A majority of the transactions also are confirmed with normal fees rather than the specific bizarre amount (10,668.73185 Ether) used in the two standout transactions with the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile, a similar weird transaction was recorded on the Litecoin Network last year where a user spent $17,500+ in transaction fees for a $778 transfer, even though the honesty of miners means that the sender also recovered eventually.
