A bizarre transaction showed up on the Ethereum network yesterday after an unknown user spent 21.13 ETH ($3070.16) in gas or transaction fees to send 0.363 ETH ($52) to another wallet address.
The originating address 0x1445f3acdfbac9d53fbf80d00fda392db69f6212 sent the funds to the receiving address 0xc46b674c2ef7bc4aea5feb123634c84e0fd73481 at around 06:47 UTC on Dec 11.
At the time of writing, the identity of the sender and the recipient is unknown, given the inherent pseudonymous nature of cryptocurrency transactions.
However, the expected reason for the discrepancies in the transaction is likely related to human error and no fault of the Ethereum network.
Possibly, the sender mistook the gas/transaction fee field for the amount they wanted to send, and thus interchanged them before broadcasting the transaction to the network.
The irrevocability of the transaction also means that there is no way to retrieve the funds, except if the mining pool, which mined block 9087416, somehow gets in touch with the sender, and decides to return the excess funds.
Notably, the fee reward for mining that Ethereum block escalated as a result of the mistake, reaching a high 21.31 ETH ($3090). The miner of the next block, 9087417, only received a 0.03 ETH ($4.5) fee reward.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time that Coinfomania has reported a bizarre transaction on a cryptocurrency network. In May, a Litecoin user spent over $17,500 in transaction fees for a $778 transfer for apparently the same reasons as the latest mishap.
