Bitcoin Forum

 While perhaps no legally bound to returning the mistakenly attached fee,  I believe that Bitcoin miners have a moral obligation to return blatantly abnormal fees once apprised of the situation hence they are not technically "under no obligation" to return the fee.  Think of it as a goodwill gesture to the Bitcoin community which already has it's more than fair share of scammers.  Wrong is wrong.

A moral obligation to fix someone else's mistake. Hellz no.

Granted, it would be a nice gesture to return what in this case seems an obvious error. If I were the miner, I would like to think that I would return the overage. But 'moral obligation'? That's crazy ass special snowflake shit.

Life is dangerous. Live accordingly. Don't expect others to clean up your messes for you.

 There's nothing crazy about moral obligation.  Life is not dangerous or there wouldn't be 7 billion humans on the planet - you're simply creating a false narrative. There's nothing dangerous about this particular predicament nor should it be considered a mess, an honest mistake has been made that merely requires honest action on the part of the miner (in this case Antminer) to remedy.  Hellz yeah!

Well, no. Miners are paid in fee to mine transactions into blocks. Miner was offered a large consideration to mine that transaction into a block RFN. Value was delivered for the consideration offered. The idea that OP did not intend to provide the consideration that s/he advertised is irrelevant from a contractual standpoint. Terms were offered, miner accepted terms, delivered miner's end.

Look, I feel for OP. And as mentioned, I'd like to think that I'd be big enough to return OP's fee. But that would merely be taking pity upon someone for making a mistake.

There is no moral obligation here.

While that might be a strong "legal" or "technical" argument, it is not a strong "moral" argument.


I'm not sure that word means what you think it means.

The "golden rule" would seem to make it pretty clear here.

If the miner (or pool) accidentally included an excessively high fee in a transaction that was confirmed by someone else, would they want that someone else to return the excess?

A little puzzled as to the question, but I'll try...

So a miner creates a transaction that has a mistaken excessive fee (i.e. in the role of a 'user'), and some other miner mined that transaction into a block? Is that the scenario? And you're asking if the first miner would want the second miner to return 'the excess' (whatever 'the excess' might be, which is an interesting question unto itself)?

Of course, miner one would want miner two to refund him the fee. And miner two would again be perfectly justified -- legally and morally -- from refusing to do so.

Why you might think the fact that the erring user also happens to mine would change the calculus in any way is beyond me.

You are both right and it depends on your perspective, definition, and beliefs about morals.

If one's primary standard of morals is simply not to attack/defraud/threaten others, then there is no 'obligation' per se to correct another's mistake and return money lost due to their own negligence.

On the other hand, if one takes the viewpoint that behaving morally means to uphold the golden rule, then returning the money is a moral way to behave. 

(However, I would say that this is more an act of kindness and not obligation.   'Moral obligation' is somewhat of an oxymoron in that regard.)

So everything is on a scale of truth...  Heck, a thief's morals are that if you can get away with stealing, you earned it! lol.

Not exactly.

More specifically, I'm stating...

The transaction posted by the OP was mined by AntPool.

Assume for a moment that the operator of AntPool were to create and broadcast a transaction that accidentally paid a 10 BTC transaction fee.

Assume in addition to that, the transaction with the 10 BTC transaction fee was confirmed by some other (Non-AntPool) miner or pool.

Would the operator of AntPool want that someone else to return some of that 10 BTC fee?



Good.  So we are in agreement that the operator of AntPool would want such behavior of others.

Would the operator of AntPool feel like the honorable and "morally good" thing would be for that someone else to return some of that 10 BTC fee?

If the answer is yes, then he is morally obligated to do so for others. If his morals and values lead him to believe that returning some of the excessive fee is "right" and "good", then failing to do so would be immoral, dis-honorable, and "wrong".  Choosing to do what you know is wrong, just because you believe you can get away with it (legally or otherwise), doesn't make it "right" or "moral".

One may choose not to act on a moral obligation, but in doing so they are acting immorally within their own structure of values.

Now, I'm not stating that AntPool objectively DOES have a moral obligation. I don't know them or their belief structure personally.  However, within my understanding of good and bad, I'd feel a moral obligation to return the excess.  I strongly suspect that returning the excess is within the concepts of "right" and "good" of the operator of AntPool.

Why not?

Shouldn't a community have a shared sense of ethics?  Can't the members of a community express their opinions about what is "right" and "good"?

The participants in the bitcoin network are governed by the same law. This law (which is the bitcoin code) should be of sound enough design not to require opinions on what is "right" and "good" concerning the actions of certain participants (or lack of responsiveness). And it is of sound design. It runs like clockwork. No rules were broken and there is no need to pass judgement on someone playing by the same rules that everyone else is playing by.

Laws (or enforced rules) are rarely strong indicator of what is "good", "right", or "moral".  The fact that something CAN be done doesn't mean that the thing SHOULD be done. There are many bad laws and rules in the world.

The rules of the bitcoin code create a framework in which we humans can operate, but as humans we still have morals and ethics that we apply to our own behaviors within that framework.  As such, we are capable of passing judgement on the actions of others when we find those actions to be dishonorable or wrong.  We can use that judgement to influence our decisions about how much we will trust others that either encourage or fail to acknowledge bad behavior.  We can use that judgement to influence our decisions about which pools we want to support with our hashpower and which merchants or customers we are willing to do business with.  A reputation is a valuable and fragile thing.  It is difficult and takes time to build and can be quickly and easily destroyed.

I think there is a big difference between a user mistakingly put a high fee on a transaction (manual error) because their wallet software could be better. But if a miner mistakenly puts a huge fee on their transactions it's because their automated software has done it (poor implementation).

Morals are a matter of perception. I'd like to think that pools wouldn't punish a user for their ignorance or stupidity. Whether mining pools take pity on each other really depends on how they want to build there relations with each other.

I think this shows a flaw in the Crypto Currency idea as a whole. A mistake was made, someone lost a lot of money, and the only thing that they can do is ask online for help, and get told "it's your fault, deal with it".

If I pay my rent and add an extra 0 to the end by mistake, I can always go to the bank and get it back.

Maybe the protocol needs some kind of messaging system. If a node receives a transaction with a per Kb fee amount that's higher than the highest per Kb fee from the last 10 blocks averaged, the node can send a message back to the sender to confirm that it is correct before relaying it to the network. Maybe some percentage above that average to account for changes in fee amounts.

The lack of support for mistakes could turn a lot away from the technology, especially when you can loose 3 grand. If I was mining with a few GPU's and found a block and included that payment, who would you go to? I guess that individual miners are a lot harder (or impossible?) to find compared to a mining pool.

You have the exact same "flaw" in all currencies.


Correct.  People need to take responsibility for their actions and their mistakes.  Some mistakes in life simply can't be undone.


That's not a currency.  That's an account at a bank.  If you use Coinbase and pay another Coinbase user the wrong amount accidentally, you could contact Coinbase, and they could potentially get you your bitcoins back as well.  Because you are dealing with accounts in their system and not with bitcoins directly.

Now, if you pay your rent with CASH and accidentally include an extra $100 bill in the envelope, the bank isn't going to help you with that.  All you can do is ask your landlord for help and get told "it's your fault, deal with it".


And yet people continue to use cash which is far more risky (can't create a backup file for accessing your cash if your cash burns up in a fire. Can't protect the cash in your wallet with a password.)

There have been some excessive fees, especialy lately that is the hot subject, but there is no law, rule, or something similar that actualy obliged miners to return such fees. It's up to their moral and good will but I don't think users can count on this in general and I don't think any returns will happen.

It is indeed user's luck to get such hefty fees back. As far as I've seen most of the publicly known cases of fee errors have got their coins back, which I think is a very good behaviour from pools... I'd too try to get those fees back to users just like pools have been doing.

Regarding morals and such, we all have our own. Fortunately for us, pools seem to have pretty good morals regarding this subject.

Well, it's not their duty to give you back your mistakenly sent fee but to my mind that situation is very important, 2.5 btc isn't small amount. Did you contact them? Also what was amount of sent bitcoins (not fee, only interest). Also man, mostly every web wallet and pc wallet tells you recomended fee and nowdays (or in the past) no one is making such fault, to my mind we need to take some changes in bitcoin protocol to automatically limit such high fee.

id love to see you in a super market, be told a stick of gum was a few cents..
you reach in your back pocket and take out what you think is a dollar and say keep the change.

then realise... it was a $100 bank note.

Legally, if an overpayment is extreme, you can make the argument that the transaction was inequitable and thus, the agreement invalid.

Not when dealing with electronic payments. I mis-worded it as a flaw as it is how it works, what isn't sent to an address is the transaction fee, but it is an easy mistake to make if you don't know that.


I know all to well what a mistake can cost. If you lost your car keys in a shop somewhere, would you just walk away and accept that you may never see it again, or do you go and ask if they've been handed in? Possibly visit local police and give them a description and hope that whoever finds them doesn't just drive away with your car, but does the honest thing?


As I said, the bank will be able to get funds back, even with inter-bank payments. If crypto currencies are going to be more than a speculative tool and store of value and be of every day use, there needs to be mechanisms to protect against monumental user fuckups. Even the banks do that, Android pay often gets me to enter my PIN when I use it in a new place or for a higher than normal amount. Granted that's also to prevent my phone being stolen and used for buying things, but it wouldn't be too hard for me to lean over near a card terminal and get unlucky and pay for something accidentally. Pretty much anything other than McDonalds is an unusual transaction for me :P

I do agree with what you are saying, Bitcoin itself can't make mistakes, only the user can, but it would only take a few people that made mistakes to post around social media. The mistake of 2 or 3 people would become "Bitcoin, the currency that keeps your $10,000 dollar mistake and leaves you to it" if the media got hold of it.

But that is exactly what it is. Everyone should be aware of this fact. Broadcasting it will only turn away those not ready to take responsibility for their actions. Leading to less pain all around.

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What's up with the thread? Did some mod comb through it, splitting the meta discussion from discussion of OP's plight? Can't say I remember ever noting that happening before on this forum.

in this case tho, antpool paid out this fee to its miners..

they then returned the fee, out of their own pocket..


its nice yes.. but required? nope..

It's great that they did so, and it's also good to know that Bitmain decided to do what they did.

But to call it as an 'obligation' of miners to return excessive fees? I don't think so. Ideally, excessive fees would naturally be returned by the miners, but realistically, they're not required to and few would do so. No one's obligated to do a thing, it's all up to one's predisposition/inclination.

Anyway, kudos to OP for contacting Bitmain on user's behalf.
(though I don't seem to see that user turning up to express his gratitude to you and others who helped him. Tsk. Sure it's not required that he do so, but that should be the morally right thing to do, wouldn't it.)

I think most/all miners are earning their profits by honestly maintaining/upgrading their physical mining sites. So far I have not heard a case in which they refuse to return accidental high fee.

Kudos to the "hardworking" and "honest" miners!! Maybe it's time to contribute your thoughts in the blocksize debate??

A moral obligation? Sure. They do have to give the fee back. It will be good for their karma. But really what else would it give them? It would be good to see if they did give it back, but do not expect anything and do not feel bad about it if they ignore you. Fair is fair in Bitcoin.

Yeah to be honest in the work they have involved it's good to return back the amount which by mistake was quoted as the transaction fee. As said we too cannot force them to return it back if they ignore. If he returns it, sure he will be blessed with something good.

We are all making mistakes, because we are not perfect and no one is perfect. And asking something back is not that easy, becuase people do like money, and 2.5 btc is a big deal. So, you are lucky if they are going to give it back to you, unlucky you if they don't. We, all the people in this world are the ones who are dangerous, and not this moral obligations.

We are all animals, animals in our own way, animals that lives in ourselves is the one who made us dangerous and making choices good or bad is up to us, and making big mistakes are the one taught us to be more careful next time, especially sending bitcoins.

I think its not their obligation to return excessive fees because they just do confirmations and it is based on the fees that you pay so if you pay a high fee then your transaction will confirm faster than others because you are more priority than others. So I don't think that there is excessive fees because it is always depend on the bitcoin sender or transaction maker if he will pay high or low fees.

I really do believe too that they have the power and authority to return misattached fees on every transaction under their miner pool.Yeah we know that its the users fault but if its too much then they have the right to claim some back and for the miner pool they have the authority to return it

I don think they have the obligation to return the fees since what happened had already happened and they are not to blame. Let us face the fact that if the bitcoin problems on mining blocksize will not be answered the transaction confirmation will still take very long and with a higher mining fee. The higher the difficulty of solving a block the higher will be the fees and that is just right even though its disappointing.