Cryptocurrency mining pool F2Pool rectifies a $510,000 transaction fee error, refunding the astronomical amount to financial technology firm Paxos.
The blunder and its immediate resolution
F2Pool, a leading name in cryptocurrency mining, returned a mistakenly inflated transaction fee of 20 BTC, approximately $510,000, to Paxos. The financial technology company had intended to transfer a minuscule 0.074 BTC, worth less than $2,000, but a bug in the transaction led to the highest fee ever recorded on the Bitcoin network.
On-chain data confirmed that F2Pool had sent the overpaid fee back to Paxos, rectifying the costly mistake. However, Jameson Lopp, co-founder of CasaHODL, delved into the incident and suggested that the error could have stemmed from a software glitch related to exchange or payment processor addresses. The address involved had processed over 60,000 transactions, indicating a likely miscalculation in change output.
Cryptopolitan earlier reported that Paxos assumed full responsibility for the blunder, stating it impacted only their corporate operations and assuring that customer funds remained secure. The company is in the process of recovering the fee through Bitcoin mining mechanisms.
Interestingly, early conjectures pointed to a possible link with PayPal, given similarities in transaction behaviors. However, Paxos neither confirmed nor denied any association with the digital wallet service.
Meanwhile, Chun Wang, co-founder of F2Pool, had initially stated that overpaid fees could be claimed within a three-day window, after which they would be redistributed among miners.
Paxos contacted F2Pool to claim fees, but Wang suggested the claim was made after the deadline due to timezone differences in a Thursday post on X (formally Twitter).
Wang said: “I was annoyed and regretted agreeing to refund that 20 BTC. Especially when I saw the person claiming it kept saying EST instead of EDT/UTC. Last time a Zcash guy did that, I blocked his entire company.”
The crypto community earlier engaged in heated discussions about the ethics of retaining or refunding such inflated fees. A poll revealed mixed opinions: 37% felt the fees should go to miners, 27% believed it should be returned to Paxos, and the rest were divided on freezing the Bitcoin or splitting it 50/50 between miners and Paxos.
