Bitcoin Forum

Another fees error has been registered on ethereum blockchain. According to this news from bitcoin.com
https://news.bitcoin.com/ethereum-user-spends-9500-in-fees-sending-just-120-in-an-error-to-forget/
A guy from reddit has declared to have loss around 10K USD just for a fee error, sending around 80x times more the right amount.

What you think about these errors? What did you think about miners that decide to keep this fees?

I'm not a fan of uniswap because of their exorbitant fees when swapping tokens. I don't even know the last time i used Metamask, perhaps I should say I wasn't really interested in DeFi's.
I have always allow my trust wallet do the magic and set the gas fee for my transaction since I know that even if it charges more than required, it will return the rest gas to my wallet after work done( transaction confirmation).
I hope the pool miners pity him and return the fee but I doubt since they already warn not to return fees after the June saga transaction fee of 5.2 million dollars (https://decrypt.co/31956/an-ethereum-user-lost-5-2-million-in-two-massive-mistakes?amp=1).

This isn't the first time that mistakes like this occurs in crypto space, I'm sure that the pool can do the right thing and refund the user, though I'm still confused about how the user managed to make such mistake, I've made such mistake on samourai wallet before, I don't know how that wallet was build, I tried sending 100$ and I had 110$ in the wallet and instead 10$ was sent using 100$ as the fee, since that time I ran away from samourai wallet

Actually the miner has no responsibility to return it. It was the error of the sender probably rushing to set his high gas on a wrong field. Probably this is a degen player whom made a huge mistake during gas war on presale.

This mistake wont happened if the sender isnt rushing. What more could be the reason on this right? Ive been staying on degen play within shitcoin on uniswap and I could say that these people are really spending much on gas in order to execute or to beat front end orders. Well too bad he made a really big mistake. But I will be glad if the miner would return it.

This is not the first one and probably won't be the last. People are not learning from others mistake and with some people earning easy money with crypto, they have became carefree on what they are doing. It could be a misfortune for the sender but it's also a lesson hard learned. People should always check out their sending address and the amount and fees they are paying. If you are not confident about the fees, don't change the default values.

That is why people should always double or triple check how they filled the transaction form and never do transactions in a rush.
I dont understand why people rush so much to do a transaction. Everything still depends on the network, so why fill all the transaction fields in a hurry. That will be an expensive lesson for him.

You how Russians, "haste is appropriate for diarrhea only"  ;)

Very unfortunate for him to have lose such huge amount of money in sending such a small amount, the ethererum network congestion and error have been for a while and so many users have been victims and I think with the coming of the 2.0 protocol soon to be release such error will not be witness.

This is the first time hearing such news that was really a huge amount I was wondering if he will be able to take it back, I think not isn't? But it is not his fault that the fee was like that and me myself won't expect that amount still I think he should really check first all the details before confirming the transaction.

This is a possible consequence when you rush things in Ethereum network, users should always keep an eye on fees because transactions are irreversible. I think with the proper communication with the pool miner there is a slight posibility that they will refund the fees it just have to undergo process that is if the company cares about it.

only less careful than the sender, even though events like this sometimes happen but we have to be more careful and careful in sending tokens / coins, we have to double-check the sending costs so that they don't happen in the future for us, just make it a lesson

lol this is what I can define as "expensive" lesson :)
by the way, each time I should send a tx I check very carefully amount to be sent, receiver address, sending address/wallet and last but not least ;) taxen fees to be used. I think this is one of worst error to commit while sending out a tx...

Do you think that guy set his gas correctly before sending that $120 ? I think there should not be any ethereum blockchain errors . I have never heard about them knowing the fact ethereum is in the market since 2016

This has happened for several year. Though, people do not learn from the previous mistake. It is because of mistyping which leads to this exorbitant problem. I can not judge either the sender or the miners. There is nothing wrong when the pool decides to keep those amount of ethereum and reward miners

Using cryptocurrency is harder than anyone can imagine. 6ou have to responsible for your mistake. And sometimes, you can not even afford your own mistake which are extremelt enormous. Therefore, remember to carefully check everything before proceeding your transaction

This transaction is ridiculous, and at the same time with a hundred plus amount of transaction, the fee should automatically change with a fee error detecting too much.

But we can't really blame the system since the error is from the user himself with a typo error. It's a big loss and hopefully or somehow Metamask will refund at least a small percentage of it.

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x5641c38bf30fd19ad3332100762017573ee676f35250dcf4a976bb0cfe31ac2f

It looks like this guy was having a problem with metamask. he will not get back his money as it will be distributed to all of miners. That's why I'm using MEW addon to connect to the uniswap rather than metamask. Im always getting a notification before try to create a tx on uniswap.

It looks like people didn't learn from the past experience that happened with others. That guy should try to be cautious with what he was doing before. This case reminds me of someone who has paid million dollars for the fees

after I read, it's a user error. the miner has no obligation to pay it back. This problem was caused because he entered the amount of gas manually. if he could have been more thorough before making the transaction this might never have happened. Moreover, before the transaction is made, there is always a notification explaining all the details of the transaction starting from the amount to be sent, GAS and GWEI.

There are many mistake happen in eth platform and this one is not the biggest lost for now .

You can read two large fees  transaction use in two different wallet worth 2.6$ million for fees https://decrypt.co/31956/an-ethereum-user-lost-5-2-million-in-two-massive-mistakes?amp=1.

There are argument that this can be not an accident but  a way  to launder eth using fees .


Can get their money back? In most cases not, miners can freeze the eth or give it back to the rightful owner depend on the miners.

It's a gross error did he not see the transactions cost that is going to happen when sending the token, I am aware of this since the beginning because I am very particular in the transactions gas, I think we should be aware of it always stop look and looked if you are the seeing the right transaction fee, I don't think they are going to return the token, they already said in the past that they are not going to entertain anymore request.

This is just a little slip that unfortunately costs high. I say a little slip because it could have been avoided. Errors on fees could really be avoided if those individuals involved in the transaction repeatedly checked them before confirming. Sadly, some people are in too much hurry or very complacent that their transactions are already good to go without even double-checking on them first.

What I also don't understand is that errors like this is still happening all the time. I don't know how people would finally learn their lessons and start to be careful in their transactions.

There is a news also who a person made mistakes of sending ethereum instead of the fees is low they set a high fees and the cost was hundred thousands dollars if Im not mistaken last few years ago happen that. And now another mistake made and that is very sad to happen because that is very big money and not easy to earn like that and I hope it will not happen to me.

Am just wondering those people making this kind of mistake if they are newbies or just trying to seek attention, i don't get how people manage to make this avoidable mistake, i can't say i blame the miner for not sending the fee back, he is not obligated to do so, but it seem to be the right thing to do under the circumstance, it is similar to sending eth or btc to the wrong address, the person who made such mistake should not expect a refund except the receiver is a very good hearted person.

If I'm not mistaken, there were also people who sold eth at a very low price, this caused the price to drop dramatically but only in short time. Maybe it's because the network is too congested, so a lot of mistakes could be made. but I'm sure ethereum 2.0 has a solution for gas fees as well as the network

I wonder why the gas price isn't displayed in stablecoin based in a popular fiat like USD. That should help reduce the confusion of the gwei unit.
Wish I could find the address to see exactly what happened, and to be sure this truely happened.


Well, such mistake shouldn't be possible on Ethereum network. It shouldn't be possible to send fees that are above 2% of users funds without strong warning . I still find it hard to understand why they allow fee to go above 20% of senders funds on the main network. Besides, transactions could be based in percentage and Network fee shouldn't go above 2% of senders funds without strong warning to the senders. The fee should also be shown in a popular stablecoin to make the price clearer to senders.

 To be honest, such over sized fees(probably fees that are above 10% of senders funds) shouldn't be touched by miners. They could even contact the senders and refund them once such fees are found. Such are likely to be mistakes, or probably gifts from people to some sort of centralized/small/known miners

A few weeks ago Ethereum transactions were very expensive, because it was natural for someone to send $ 9500 fees to $ 120,
but now Ethereum seems to have fixed that, and GAS is much cheaper even though the network is full.

The lack of user friendliness of Ethereum is one of it's biggest downsides. For a beginner it can be hard to differentiate between gas price and gas limit.. It can be an intimidating experience when making a transaction for the first time and not knowing what the hell you are doing. Even experienced users are susceptible to making these kinds of mistakes.

This isn't a new thing mate, those are mistakes which are made out of rushing to get some coins either from IEO or ICO. Remember that, whenever some players heard about DEFI projects they don't checked the fees before making their purchase, by so doing they end up be victims. Miners don't have powers over the fees on the Blockchain but be rest assure that, the victim have leaned the bitter lesson.

This was one of the news i red on google this morning. That is really sad. I have made mistakes in sending token/coin but this one is very painful. I feel your pain bro. Be careful next time; always cross check  the wallet and gas fee when doing transactions.

This is a sad scenario for that guy spending so much money in just transaction. We know that it is not easy to get money nowadays due to pandemic and now seems like it all be wasted. Imagine 10K usd of transaction fee to send 120$? Hmmm. How does he do it why such a big transaction fee deducted. I think he had a wrong information input in the field prior to transact and that led to high transaction fee. Better check next time all the possibilities before proceeding into the process of transaction.

It is clear that he was trying to get his transaction out as soon as possible, so he was either trying to get his money to an exchange to take advantage of an opportunity or something similar, but now we can see the consequences of doing this, I understand that mistakes can be made from time to time, which is why I have suggested in the past that wallets have a feature integrated on them that in the case a user sends a fee which is 3 times higher than the fee necessary to get a confirmation on the next block then a warning message must appear.

That way the user will have yet one more chance to realize their mistake, if after that they do not realize their mistake then there is not much we can do to protect someone that does not care about protecting himself.

in my opinion this is a human errors, not because the network
thats why people should double check not only the receiver address but the gas fee too, to minimize the risk of human errors

No one in their right mind would trade when their drunk though. It's most likely that he switched the meaning between "gwei" and "gas". Bad luck to him though because I really doubt that he will get the money as:

"Bitfly, Ethermine’s parent firm, said at the time that it will not investigate or refund any such errors in the future."

Yeah there is I think a connection between being drunk and the 120$. If you like to pay a bill during the drinking session and bills reaches to 120$ which the drunk man decide to pay it with crypto. I think it happen that the drunk man mistakenly adjust payment for faster transaction without getting notice of adjustment being made due to liquor influence. Well, it is his fault and no one to blame it except himself.

The fee will be distributed to miners on the pool that received the fee. Ethermine mining pool did in in June.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/ether-mining-pool-decides-to-pocket-one-of-the-26m-fee-transactions
https://news.bitcoin.com/ethermine-mining-pool-cashes-in-2-6-million-ethereum-fee-windfall/

And 2 pools (Sparkpool and Ethermine) will do their distributions for the latest high fees from 3 transactions.
https://en.ethereumworldnews.com/starkpool-ethermine-opt-to-distribute-5m-in-eth-fees-to-miners/

One of Metamask's weakness is that there is no alert when users set high or unreasonable transaction fees. This feature should be added considering the metamask is quite popular among ERC20 holders. Moreover, when blockchain traffic is heavy, people choose to manually set fees to get higher priority confirmation.

A human error I'd say. According to the article, he thought, gas is gwei so he inputted $9,5k to the wrong place. About the miners, they will keep it. Free money is free and even if the person begs, they will still not give it back since what they are doing isn't really illegal. It's all part of the game.

If he was in such a rush, he could have just selected "fast" while making a transaction. Ledger shows a warning message when you make a overpriced transaction. Myetherwallet has slow/normal/fast transaction option and before you make a transaction, asks for a confirmation.

That guy wrote on the reddit that he used Metamask. It also have speed options. Dont know why he had chosen to write "gas limit" (misclicked to "gas price"), when with "fast" option it shows that my transaction will get to destination in 29sec. IRL it would take few minutes. Was it so necessary to send funds so fast to uniswap? Doubt it.

I think a good service would ensure that such human error is easily noticed and corrected, or doesn't even occur atall. It is an important problem that can't be left unsolved if there are viable solutions for it.  It actually makes transacting on the network with big amount alittle risky.

Yes. He manually inputs some numbers in the gas because metamask wasn't adding gas for him. I wonder how that happens, maybe his metamask isn't updated because afaik metamask automatically provides options whether he wants the transaction to be prioritized which costs less than $2.

He claimed that it destroyed his life lol, I'm not so sure about that. There are certainly thousands to millions of people that don't have $9500 worth of ETH.  He must have more in BTC.

That's really an expensive mistake both fault but the other side gain which are the miners and the other one lose which losses $9500 for the transaction alone. Imagine transferring a small amount with a very huge transaction fee.

I know right!
This are the kind of transactions miners pick with joy while confirming the transaction on a block.
We are human and very prone to mistakes, but I still just feel this mistake is something intentionally done. When making transactions on Metamask, after making an input of gwei and gas, it used to display transaction information and ask for permission to run the transaction.
I believe he saw that and still went ahead.  :'(

Two things he is in a hurry to missed the transaction information, the transaction information is always on display you should always and make it a habit to look at the whole transaction, what I mean is to double-check, even triple check and see that things are ok to proceed, in my case I even heck and double-check, if the address is correct, you should be aware that you can make a mistake and by slowing down you can avoid this.
Unfortunately, he did not do this and he has nothing to blame but himself, miners should not feel guilty if they do not want to return the coins, it's not their fault.

Firstly, everyone should stay careful and confirm the details of each transaction to avoid such errors and mistakes.
But when such mistake occur i think eth network should use their authority and return the extra fee to the user as it was sent by mistake, this will not only boost trust but will help in adoption of the technology.

He's naming it wrong. It wasn't just a fee error but a human error.

You can do things like that in Bitcoin as well and there were instances where people set higher fees than the coins they were trying to send.

It's an expensive mistake and I agree that there should be a system preventing users from setting their fees too high.

These things actually got a lot better in the recent years, it has to be someone who didn't use any proper wallet because almost all wallets now offer you a lot better options to just pick and send, you do not need to do anything else to make it work, you just have to make sure that you click the right button and that's it.

I understand if it was like back in good old days of using blockchain.info where you had to calculate the fee and how much it would cost and you had to send it manually by putting 1 satoshi above so yours would get faster etc etc, those days were definitely something we could have seen this happening all the time. However nowadays you just pick 3 options, slow/medium/fast and you click accept and your money is gone, how could you make a mistake like this when tech is improved at such a level.

this is not the first time because many have made mistakes like this. the possibility of people doing this might be because they still don't know about GWEI or maybe it's money laundering, we really don't know what they are planning

Mistakes became already a normal scenario within this industry that we are all currently in. Such mistakes are always committed by the newbies acting that they already know too many things that they are all doing many unnecessary thing all alone. The mistake on this case might be on the part of the sender himself being too impatient for the process of transaction to come along with his wants. People must know specially the newbies that they must be patient and be contented to wait for the transaction to be confirmed for it will surely make happen as long as you are sure about the address you are going to send the transaction. It is just so unfortunate for him that he have spent almost $10,000 just for a $120 transaction which have been prevented if he just become patient on things and consider waiting as an option. People must seek learning first before doing things that are not familiar with them. Yes, doing transactions are just easy with a couple of inputs but if you are not knowledgeable enough, then you might be ending up just what like the guy have suffered.

That's a fool move. He did not even check his transaction before he proceed it. I never used uniswap yet but we all know that in every transaction there is always confirmation before it take place. However, yet the user committed this mistake, it should be the problem to ethereum network as well. There is so much high fees and it cannot be retrieve again once you confirmed the transaction. This error will not exist if eth has only small fee in every transaction.

Honestly, I'm amazed by this, how can some pay $9,500 just to send $120, this is the first time I'm hearing such, I really feel for him though, that's a huge mistake and it really costed him alot, not sure if this fault is from the miners, cause they just tell you how much you need to pay, so it's up to you to decide, whether to pay or not, i think this guy was probably in a hurry that he didn't calm down to check the TX fee, that's why it's always advisable to double check before clicking the "send" button.

I don't know exactly but maybe because Ethereum 2.0 gives an impact on ethereum network including gas fees it makes such an error. With this error, people are not able to transact because they don't have the amount. For me this case is so simple, just waiting until the error is finished.

Actually, it is not the first case to have this kind of transaction in eth. But I am wondering how they proceed the send button, when the wallet will ask you about the gas fee to be used in your transaction? Are they reading the pop-ups before pressing the send button? Because whenever I transact with eth tokens, I double check if not triple check the addresses involved and the fees to be used, to avoid mistake or wrong address used.

Ethereum 2.0 has nothing to with this error, it's the user who is at fault here for not checking if the transaction fee is correct, you will see a confirmation first before you hit the confirm button, because from there you will see the transaction fee, I don't know why he failed to see that, it's total carelessness, this is an isolated case and the blame is on the user.

Wow, it is not a small amount right. But, how can he still d the transaction or withdrawal if he knew about the fee? Before sending, we need to double-check the wallet, numbers, and also fees. Did he not do it?
Well, this is big trouble in the ETH platform and it may be some errors. If it happens, can we get a refund? Or will ETH be responsible for this?

How can you confirm the transaction on a fees like that? I don’t know what’s the error here since I only transact small amount of money, well is this a human error or a system error?

If you make a transaction make sure that you checked everything because once you click “OK”, that means you agreed on that transaction and your wallet provider has no liability to you anymore.

Then this most likely means that he was simply unfamiliar with the UI of the wallet and made a mistake, this is in fact common, many people in the market are holders and they do not make transactions every day so assuming he only sends a transaction once every two months then it is natural to forget the process.

And when you add that there are users that prefer to insert the fee themselves in order to not overpay or to at least have greater control over the costs of their transactions, and I will include myself among those, then it makes sense we see mistakes like this from time to time.

It was the sender who made the error, so the miners will really keep it. This is not the first time that this happened, it was happened also before where over a thousand dollars were spent only for a small amount of money, unfortunately, they were not able to return it back even if it was made in error.

That was really an expensive error. That's really troublesome for me imagine losing big amount for such error if I'm on his position
I don't think if i could eat or sleep for days.

I just only guess how much irresponsible he was, that's massive lost indeed. The sender allow to set limits on the maximum amount of gas which one definitely greater than required gas. That's absolutely horror part, they might consider on it, and we have to give it more priority since we're dealing with blockchain.

I think all ethereum wallet platforms including metamask should create the notification of the gas price the sender about to use.
For example, it will notify the sender when he use too much gas compare the average gas price on the network.
If there is no notification, the same mistake will repeating someday and people will be afraid to use the wallet.

This is not the first and this os not going to be the last, compared to the errors from the past 10K doesn't look like big amounts. Its on the miner decision whether they will return or keep it themselves.

When we see these kind of news then we will be caring little extra when we set the fee next time for the cryptocurrency transaction.

the frequency of this error should put it a matter of urgency for all platforms involves. There should be an automatic fee calculation base on the size of transacting token like on MEW but If anyone desire a high fee he can add that himself. The loss is enormous and should be reduced, we need a level of safety. This can happen to anyone, we cant be in a the same frame of mind every time

already there were several news about big fees for transferring relatively small amounts of crypto. as I remember miners returned money to the users and in this case the situation may repeat itself.

Many platforms already offer you the possibility of setting the fee by just sliding a bar with a set maximum so you don't pay more than what you should, but many people prefer to put the fee themselves because they believe they can calculate more accurately how much money they need to pay for the fee in order to get the confirmation that they want.

And I know that because I do that all the time I prefer to know exactly how much I'm sending as a fee but this has the problem that if you confuse the fields of the fee and the amount you want to send as a transaction then something like this can happen to you.

First in their wallet have more than $9.5K equal to Ethereum, so this case can happen, And second, Did he not see clearly the transaction fee? I think we will crosscheck everything before making any transaction, especially for amount and transaction fee, so This case was purely human error

Well Crazy guy decided to give miners early Christmas gift I really dont know how someone as rich as this makes this kind of error I mean he must have done so many transactions to know how those things works Yet stupid mistake make you do that My advice dont get high close to a trade or transfer

This guy should be rewarded for showing this kind of error that can be expensive and maybe it was an execution error but crashing at high rates shows how flawed the system is. The system is not really obliged to reimburse, but it's clear that if there is a fault, that fault must be fixed. I believe Vitalik should see this article. Will we find this type of failure in the new consensus Eth 2.0? That is a question for to think about.

I can only relate this to a novice act or error due to oversight at the time of transacting. It's a huge loss that will teach him a lifetime lesson.

The question has already been raised many times why the Node software does not limit the size of the commission, so that users do not lose their money by mistake or in the event of hacker attacks on the service software.
In the DEFI ecosystem, you can see huge commissions, but this is due to the profit received and the fact that arbitrage opportunities are relevant for several blocks

This is probably an unfortunate incident, sometimes technology disappoints and it shows that sometimes any person may face this kind of bug on the current ethereum network. There is no big deal for a wealthy user to afford this kind of loss but a user who belongs to a middle class side will always feel regret hopefully after the upgrade of ethereum network nobody will face this kind of problem.

It's not a bug but a human error, it's negligence on his part I guess he is into something on the time that he is sending the funds because every time you are going to send a fund, there is a notification on the cost of the fee and the amount you are sending, I don't know how he bypasses that, he is too hurry to miss that, it's a big lesson for him and something to be careful for all of us that this thing can and actually happen.

Pretty sure this kind of error only possible when they are using some kind of desktop wallet that didnt set the fee automatically or using some custom fee. If he sends eth from an exchange for example, this kind of mistake not gonna occur because the fee already set from the exchange.
This is why when people uses wallet like desktop wallet which gives user full control, they should know what they are doing and responsible for themselves and it's definitely human error as many people said and have nothing to do with eth blockchain or the current gas fee.

well, this is what makes the Ethereum platform even more hated by users,
if their fees are always having problems and are always expensive, the Ethereum platform will obviously be abandoned,
and prefer another blockchain platform, I heard rumors, that Ethereum 2.0 will not be able to solve this problem.

You are posting without reading the thread content it's human error not of Ethereum platform, it was his negligence that this thing happen, he could have not proceed with the transaction if he is only mindful of the transaction, only two reason that I can think of, he is either drunk or he is doing something much more important than transacting, this is risky if it is one of these.

Ethereum 2.0 not even launched yet the staking process takes quite sometime and no it's not the blockchain system error most likely his own fault for maybe mistyping the fee needed. Also, I don't think the error in this case just gonna solve itself. He already spend that much of money to pay gas fee which means faster transaction confirmation and possibly losing it. Blockchain is irreversible and don't tolerate such mistake from the people who made transaction.

I am quite puzzled how it happened and where the error came from, is the user has made a mistake or the problem is in the ethereum blockchain itself. It will be  good if the miners will decide to refund the fee as it is the right thing to do especially if they know that the error is not coming from the user itself.

But upon reading what really happened, I guess the fault is coming from the user so I am not so sure if he can still get the money that he lost in his error. We should be very careful especially if we want to change the gas price manually because a single mistake will cost us a lot the same to what happened to "Proudbitcoiner". I will just hope that he can still get the money back even if he has a very less chance in doing it.

I wish i know the explanation for such error. Maybe the sender was high on something because you can't just make a transaction without seeing the fee being charged. You even need to confirm your transaction hence that was the chance for the sender to see the error before the final button pressed. I guess that was his/her fate.

As weird as it may sound, this is a mistake anyone could make. There could be some kinda bug or just straight negligence. Better you always triple check your transaction fee and wallet address before completing any transaction.

If you will check the link provided by OP it is stated the explanation why this error was occured,
"According to a Nov. 4 post on Reddit, Proudbitcoiner said they accidentally typed in the wrong transaction fee, leading to a transfer of amounts nearly 80 times the size intended." (https://news.bitcoin.com/ethereum-user-spends-9500-in-fees-sending-just-120-in-an-error-to-forget/)
This error has been committed due to their end, they might not be able to check it twice or confirm the amount of transaction fee input before they do the transaction.

Often this used to take place with bitcoin transaction. This time it has taken place with the ethereum transaction. The mistake had made him loss his entire funds. He is pity, and has tried his best to reach ethermine and explain all that has happened. Hope he'll get the ethereum refunded. Whenever we make a transaction making going through each and every tab is good to avoid such mistakes. If I'm at his position now I could've got mad out of frustration.

That’s right since you need to confirm the transaction first before you proceed and you’ll see there the amount of the fees, though this error is very strange to me and alarming. Every time the market pump the fees are also increasing, hopefully they can work with this one as well and add this one to the ETH 2.0 update.