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Two consecutive days of nearly identical excessive transaction fees! Is it an accident or is there something more to it?

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Two consecutive days of nearly identical excessive transaction fees! Is it an accident or is there something more to it?

Yesterday afternoon, an unknown user or group paid a transaction fee of 10,668.73185 ETH (approximately $2.65 million) for a 0.55 ETH (approximately $137) transaction on the Ethereum network. What's even more surprising is that another transaction with an excessively high fee of 10,668.73185 ETH appeared today at noon, raising questions about whether this is a mistake or if there is another mystery behind it.

$2.65 Million Transfer Fee

Yesterday at 5:47 PM, a transaction appeared on the Ethereum blockchain. The transaction sent 0.55 ETH (approximately worth $137) – a seemingly normal amount. However, the person initiating the transaction set the Gas Price to 500,000,000 Gwei (considering that a Gas Price of 40 Gwei was already considered high at the time). In other words, they paid a transaction fee of 10,668.73 ETH (approximately worth $2.65 million) to transfer 0.55 ETH.

Source: etherscan

The block containing this transaction was eventually mined by China's Spark Pool, making them the lucky recipient of the 10,668.73185 ETH fee. However, Spark Pool did not pocket the windfall but instead temporarily halted the distribution of mining rewards, awaiting contact from the user who initiated the transaction.

Interestingly, this is not the first time Spark Pool has been the lucky recipient of an excessive fee, and each time they have made efforts to locate and assist the original sender in handling the funds. Last year, Spark Pool similarly mined a block with a 2,100 ETH fee, valued at over $300,000, and identified the sender as a blockchain company in South Korea, agreeing to return half the fee.

Why Was So Much Money Spent?

Essentially, Ethereum users can fully control and adjust the price of transaction fees. The more they are willing to pay, the higher the chance their transaction will be prioritized for processing. However, paying such a high fee is highly unusual under normal circumstances.

So, what led to such a high excessive fee? The simplest explanation is that the person initiating the transaction intended to send 10,668.73 ETH with a 0.55 ETH fee but accidentally reversed the two numbers. However, there are several puzzling aspects to this. Firstly, this address had previously initiated transactions with a normal Gas Price of 60 Gwei, but this time it was set to 500,000,000 Gwei. This suggests that the initiator may have manually changed the default parameters for some unknown reason.

Furthermore, when miners package transactions, they typically prioritize those with higher fees from the transaction pool. Therefore, transactions are arranged in blocks according to Gas Price. However, the other transactions in the block were not ordered by Gas Price. Overseas media Decrypt claims this may indicate that someone from Spark Pool manually created the transaction and deliberately included it in the block. However, another transaction at 11:00 AM today contradicts these possibilities.

Another Excessive Fee Transaction the Next Day

According to Etherscan data, around 11:30 AM today, Ethereum saw another excessive fee transfer. What's most puzzling is that both transactions paid an identical fee of 10,668.73185 Ether, down to the decimal point. This almost certainly rules out intentional actions and suggests either a wallet or transfer system glitch that has yet to be rectified.

Source: Etherscan

However, the block containing this transaction was not mined by Spark Pool but by Ethermine. Bitfly (the company behind Ethermine) publicly stated upon discovery:

"Today, Ethermine mined the transaction. This was an accident. Please contact us, the sender of the transaction."

Excessive Fees Not Unprecedented

While these transactions are rare, they are not unheard of in the cryptocurrency realm. Cornell University professor and AVA Labs founder Emin Gün Sirer suggests two possible explanations for these errors: honest mistakes, where someone accidentally reverses the fee and transfer amount, or miners using this method to launder tainted or illegally sourced cryptocurrencies through mining rewards, turning them into clean tokens for money laundering purposes.