A Second Ethereum Transaction With $2.6 Million Fee From The Same Address Just Took Place

Yesterday, an unusual transaction grabbed the community’s attention as someone paid 10,668 ETH (over $2.6 million) in fees, while the value it transmitted was only 0.55 ETH.

Today, another transaction originating from the same wallet carried 350 ETH, and the fee was again – 10,668 ETH. The mining group that mined the block has urged the owner of the address to contact them to resolve the issue.

$2.6M In Ethereum Fees (Again)

As CryptoPotato reported yesterday, an unknown address sent a transaction of 0.55 ETH to another unknown user. What was quite intriguing about it was the fee that was paid – 10,668 ETH or over $2.6 million.

While some speculations implied that it was an apparent mistake of merely swapping the “value” and “transaction fee” fields in the API call, history repeated itself today.

Another transaction, originating from the same address, carried 350 ETH (worth approximately $86,250 at the time of this writing) to an unknown wallet. The fee it had to pay, however, was again precisely 10,668 ETH.

Reactions From The Mining Companies

Spark Pool mined the initial transaction. The company issued an official statement on the matter almost immediately after mining block 10237208, saying that it had launched an investigation. Spark Pool noted it “has the experience of handling similar issues properly.” Over a year ago, the firm mined block 7238290, which transmitted 0.1 ETH of value, but the fee was 2,100 ETH.

Today’s transaction was included in block 10241999, which was mined by another company called Ethermine. The firm was quick to react and posted on Twitter that the sender should contact them immediately to resolve this concern.

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

If the problem with the first transaction was indeed a human error, the second one might invalidate this theory. Even if the initiator had mistaken again the fields for “value” and “transaction fee,” 350 ETH is too high of a fee for a 10,668 ETH transaction. This could mean that there’s a more serious bug in the system that needs a thorough investigation.

This article was first published on: Jun 11, 2020