What? Someone Just Paid $2.6 Million in Fees on the Ethereum Network

Blockchain-based transactions are known to be inherently cheaper and faster.

On some days, however, things can go bizarre, as in a recently identified transaction on the Ethereum network where a certain user spent 10,668.73185 Ether (appr. $2.6 million) in transaction fees.

The transaction which was confirmed today at 09:47:04 AM +UTC saw only 0.55 ETH (appr. $133) moved for the outrageous transaction fee. This fee will push the average daily Ethereum network transaction fee chart to a high side with only 2152 ETH spent in all Ethereum transactions in the last 24 hours.

Meanwhile, the current bizarre transaction fee is way higher than another incident where 656 ETH ($81,736) was spent on an empty transaction. A similar weird transaction was also confirmed on the Litecoin Network last year where a user spent $17,500+ in transaction fees for a $778 transfer.

Human error

However, it is important to note that mistakes such as the current one are usually human error and not as a result of a bug on the blockchain network. The most likely scenario is that the sender mistook the transaction fee option for the amount that they wanted to move on-chain, and then confirmed the transaction without double-checking.

Meanwhile, situations such as this also highlight when the irrevocability of blockchain-based transactions could serve as an obstacle to widespread adoption. On traditional payment platforms, such transactions can easily be reversed by the third-party payment processor.

Can The User Get a Refund?

As noted earlier, blockchain transactions are irreversible on-chain.

However, the affected user, in this case, could get the amount spent in the transaction fee by reaching out to Spark Pool, the Ethereum mining pool which mined the block containing the transaction.

Spark Pool has also confirmed they received the funds and will now wait for the sender to contact them with information on how to get a refund.

On the positive angle, we reported earlier this year that $458 million worth of bitcoins were moved for just $0.38 in fees.

 

Update: We have updated this article to include information that Spark Pool received the funds and will issue a refund.