Ouch, today someone made a transaction with over $500k fee.

[Cricktor]

If I were a miner on F2pool I'd be rather pissed by the refund to Paxos that has been transfered back to them even with zero tx fee.

So, why the TwiXXer poll, why ignore the poll's result? Care to explain, F2pool? Paxos failed programmatically because their likely lausy software didn't cover some edge cases. It's clearly their fault or whatever edge conditions lead to the faulty transaction with an exorbitant fee. Obviously there were no sanity checks for unreasonably high fees.

If it were some fat finger Bitcoin noob, well, the pool might consider to be generous and refund maybe 50% and distribute the other 50% rightfully to its miners. (A Bitcoin noob who was able to acquire ~20BTC isn't likely of the poor species.)

This all went somehow too smooth, but hey, it was a nice talk of the town, PayPal, Paxos and F2pool had their publicity share. Who cares if it was good or bad in the eyes of PR. I'm kind of torn between disappointment and mild amusement about this exceptional blockchain event. And Paxos? Well, they say, your funds are safu... Sure, with such software quality... I get it!

[1714707364]

1714707364

[1714707364]

1714707364

[Z-tight]

I wonder if this kind of actions would bring or open something like a "precedent" for other situations

It wouldn't, it is clear to everyone who understands how BTC works that tx fees attached to a tx is for the miners, and in the case of an overpayment the miner has the right to keep their reward in fees or return it if they want to, whatever they decide to do is up to them and is 'right'. Situations of huge overpayments rarely happens anyway, so what i think is that as this very case with Paxos was widely covered, it will teach people to use good wallets to make tx's and also to double check everything before broadcasting.

[fruktik]

I was wondering if the story of who actually did this will have come to light and here we have it.
Actually I am relieved that it wasn't a private person that didn't lose all their saving because of such a silly mistake because this could ruin you.
I also made costly mistakes years ago that still haunt me sometimes but something in this range would just devastating!

Well, who hasn’t made such mistakes related to cryptocurrency transfers? It seems to me that this number of people is quite large. I would be surprised if it was otherwise. Still, this is a new technology that should be carefully studied, and without practical personal experience this is impossible.
This is probably why the government is trying to protect citizens from hasty conclusions about this whole area.
To this day, similar mistakes are made, but this will be an experience not only for those who made them, but also for everyone else.

[Lida93]

I wonder if this kind of actions would bring or open something like a "precedent" for other situations

It wouldn't, it is clear to everyone who understands how BTC works that tx fees attached to a tx is for the miners, and in the case of an overpayment the miner has the right to keep their reward in fees or return it if they want to, whatever they decide to do is up to them and is 'right'.

Did you just say it's their right! Such right, Is it ideal? What's the ethical or moral philosophy behind that right in keeping what doesn't count as yours.

We understand that clarity about tx fees for miners but when you receive what's above your pay cheque especially to that range of amount of tx fees it will be reputable to return it to the owner as it could be an act of error, and no one is above error.

One good turn deserves another. If that of 2016 mistake was returned then this should also be returned too.

[Z-tight]

Did you just say it's their right! Such right, Is it ideal? What's the ethical or moral philosophy behind that right in keeping what doesn't count as yours.

Yes i said so, it is their right to return an overpayment or not, it is their reward in fees and surely it is their right to do what they want with it. Take note that whatever fee attached to a mined tx now belongs to the miner, it counts as theirs and no longer belongs to whomever made the tx. It is just like saying you overpaid when sending BTC's to someone, and now you want some of the output back, it is the goodwill of the recipient to either keep the money or send them back to you, it isn't in the rights of the sender to enforce that refund.

We understand that clarity about tx fees for miners but when you receive what's above your pay cheque especially to that range of amount of tx fees it will be reputable to return it to the owner as it could be an act of error, and no one is above error.

How can miners verify it was a mistake, anybody can come out and claim a mistake. Take note that there is no exact "paycheque" for miners, just take a look at some ordinals tx's and the fees attached to them, whatever tx fee attached to a tx will be taken by the miner as what you wish to pay. True that no one is above mistake, but it is better to let people know the truth so they can double or triple check next time they are about to hit that broadcast button.

[Synchronice]

I figured they would refund.

It does bring an interesting issue for a small pool.

https://pool.laurentiapool.org/#/work

if this small pool had hit it . the software auto sends to the four addresses that have mined to it.

so that 25 coin block would go to four people. take 180 blocks to clear.  and paypal/paxos would need to talk to four people to get a refund. not the pool but the four that mine to it.

I live in U.S.A.  I would not be able to simply return the 7 or so extra coins I got.  My address is registered and is kyc. thus it would look like I had a large taxable income.

Actually, no miner has to refund any transaction fee, even if it's 1000 bitcoins, simply no miner has to do that because there is no limit to bitcoin transaction fees since it's dynamic and fees are manually set from 1 to infinite, you can modify it the way you wish. So, I assume, no one can force any miner to refund, it's absolutely your gesture of goodwill to refund it.
To be honest, asking for refund of transaction fees looks like asking for refund of bitcoins that you sent to wrong address. If I send bitcoins to wrong address that doesn't exist, who is going to refund? This is nature of bitcoin, so, your wrong transaction fees should be taken over like wrongly sent bitcoins or lost bitcoins.

[o_e_l_e_o]

The mining pool could quite easily keep it for themselves. They haven't done anything wrong, and are just keeping the fee for a transaction which was broadcast to the network. Similarly, the mining pool could be anonymous, or it could have already distributed it to all its miners. Good luck contacting hundreds of anonymous miners and begging them to each give back 0.01 BTC.

Returning an overpaid fee should very much not be treated as the norm. Otherwise I could just overpay any transaction I need confirmed and then claim back the fee after it is confirmed? I suspect F2Pool only did it because PayPal and Paxos are the kind of scummy, ammoral entities to start blaming others for their own mistakes and start legal proceedings against these completely innocent third parties.

[philipma1957]

I figured they would refund.

It does bring an interesting issue for a small pool.

https://pool.laurentiapool.org/#/work

if this small pool had hit it . the software auto sends to the four addresses that have mined to it.

so that 25 coin block would go to four people. take 180 blocks to clear.  and paypal/paxos would need to talk to four people to get a refund. not the pool but the four that mine to it.

I live in U.S.A.  I would not be able to simply return the 7 or so extra coins I got.  My address is registered and is kyc. thus it would look like I had a large taxable income.

Actually, no miner has to refund any transaction fee, even if it's 1000 bitcoins, simply no miner has to do that because there is no limit to bitcoin transaction fees since it's dynamic and fees are manually set from 1 to infinite, you can modify it the way you wish. So, I assume, no one can force any miner to refund, it's absolutely your gesture of goodwill to refund it.
To be honest, asking for refund of transaction fees looks like asking for refund of bitcoins that you sent to wrong address. If I send bitcoins to wrong address that doesn't exist, who is going to refund? This is nature of bitcoin, so, your wrong transaction fees should be taken over like wrongly sent bitcoins or lost bitcoins.

Like I said that small pool above will send me the fees which in the case of this error would be 7 or 8 coins of the 19 extra paid.

7 to 8 coins is very close to 200k.

 I live in USA I report my mining my taxes due would be over 50k on that 200k close to 60k tax maybe 65k.

The pool above will send it to me automatically it will be in my hands. so I have a tax issue.

Another pool that could have done this is solo ckpool. you hit the block you get it all automatically.

So you would have 24 or 25 coins in hand.


f2pool most likely would freeze it and it would never go into the hands of the miners. so zero tax issues

[pawel7777]

F2Pool owner is now asking the community what they should do with the funds: https://nitter.cz/satofishi/status/1702095123981738437#m

They should've asked before declaring they would refund it. And looks like he was just having a laugh with that poll. Despite the majority voting against it, apparently they did the right thing and returned that fee anyway:

what if the miner denied to pay the refund? like if we lost our money then we can complaint to police, is there any authority in this type of case?

You can't contact the police because the miner did not steal anything. They simply mined your transaction, the fee of which you chose. If you chose the wrong fee, then that's your fault.

That's actually quite interesting from the legal point of view. As much as it's not something that would be reportable to police, depending on the jurisdiction, you could still take the miner to the civil court with a chance of winning.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Despite the majority voting against it, apparently they did the right thing and returned that fee anyway:

Who's to say it was the right thing to do? Whenever the average user makes a mistake and over pays their fee, they simply have to wave goodbye to their money. Why should it be different for Paxos?

Average people getting screwed while corporations do what they like is all too reminiscent of fiat.

depending on the jurisdiction, you could still take the miner to the civil court with a chance of winning.

And impossible to enforce. If the pool operator has already distributed the fee to the miners, then they have nothing to pay back. And if they were to start skimming a percentage off all future blocks to repay it, then their miners would simply switch to a different pool.

[Synchronice]

That's actually quite interesting from the legal point of view. As much as it's not something that would be reportable to police, depending on the jurisdiction, you could still take the miner to the civil court with a chance of winning.

I bet 99.9999999% if not 100% of lawyers and judges have absolutely no idea about how bitcoin mining and blockchain network works. This would be the case where they'll have to judge what they don't know and won't be able to understand which argument is right or wrong.
We aren't students of school of law but we can logically say that there is absolutely zero chance that miner is guilty. It's miners duty to mine bitcoin block and keep mining fees. I would even say that if miner agrees to return fees to someone, they are probably part of money laundering. Why? Because, why would someone pay half a billion in fees and then ask miner for return? To launder money, that's how they do that. We can argue on this, right? Sure. But the best judge in this case is Bitcoin Whitepaper, it doesn't say that we should return fees to transaction makers. Instead, miners should keep them, it's their property.

Despite the majority voting against it, apparently they did the right thing and returned that fee anyway:

Who's to say it was the right thing to do? Whenever the average user makes a mistake and over pays their fee, they simply have to wave goodbye to their money. Why should it be different for Paxos?

Average people getting screwed while corporations do what they like is all too reminiscent of fiat.

The most interesting part is, what would happen if they didn't return fee? What would PayPal and Paxos do? Would this motivate them to immediately start demarketing of Bitcoin and decentralized Proof Of Work? Probably it was a right choice this time because these big corporations have enormous power, it would make F2Pool and others to look bad and PayPal would try to market itself even better and socially step up because as you know, people are naive and lack critical thinking. Otherwise, I totally agree with you, big corporations should pay! Always!

[Z-tight]

The most interesting part is, what would happen if they didn't return fee? What would PayPal and Paxos do? Would this motivate them to immediately start demarketing of Bitcoin and decentralized Proof Of Work?

They can't demarket BTC if the miners had kept the fee, even if they wanted to do it. BTC's isn't centralized, and anyone with understanding of how it works knows there is no way to enforce a refund or reversal of payment in the BTC's network, unlike in centralized payment systems and centralized crypto. So even if they were going to publish negative info or articles about BTC, it won't change anything, institutions and the media have been doing that for a long time to deceive only the gullible.

Probably it was a right choice this time because these big corporations have enormous power, it would make F2Pool and others to look bad and PayPal would try to market itself even better and socially step up because as you know, people are naive and lack critical thinking. Otherwise, I totally agree with you, big corporations should pay! Always!

Yeah people are naive, but if they believe mining or POW is bad because miners kept the fee you attached to your tx, but paypal is 'good'  'better' when they freeze and confiscate people's funds and could probably seize your money if you make posts that "hurt their feelings" online, then there's nothing you can do to help these kind of people, and maybe BTC wasn't meant for them at all.

[Latviand]

I bet 99.9999999% if not 100% of lawyers and judges have absolutely no idea about how bitcoin mining and blockchain network works. This would be the case where they'll have to judge what they don't know and won't be able to understand which argument is right or wrong.
We aren't students of school of law but we can logically say that there is absolutely zero chance that miner is guilty. It's miners duty to mine bitcoin block and keep mining fees. I would even say that if miner agrees to return fees to someone, they are probably part of money laundering. Why? Because, why would someone pay half a billion in fees and then ask miner for return? To launder money, that's how they do that. We can argue on this, right? Sure. But the best judge in this case is Bitcoin Whitepaper, it doesn't say that we should return fees to transaction makers. Instead, miners should keep them, it's their property.

How are you so sure that there's nil lawyers would have no idea about this kind of case? Is your superiority complex that bad that you think that other people that don't have an inkling of knowledge or their interests are outside of bitcoin don't have the idea what they can do with this? They don't need to know it, the clients and the defendants just need to tell the truth and everything that the court needs to know so they can make a case about it. Clearly you and I aren't a student that's involve with law but I don't just blurt conjecture with confidence. Not everything wrong with bitcoin is money laundering, it's been proven already that bitcoin's a bad cryptocurrency to use for that kind of activity.

[pawel7777]

Despite the majority voting against it, apparently they did the right thing and returned that fee anyway:

Who's to say it was the right thing to do? Whenever the average user makes a mistake and over pays their fee, they simply have to wave goodbye to their money. Why should it be different for Paxos?

Depends on your morality (or lack thereof) I guess. To me it's pretty clear. If you know that someone paid you too much in error, and it's practical and possible to refund them - you should.
If you sold a car to your friend and they accidentally wired you $20k instead of $10k, you wouldn't use "other people make mistakes and lose money permanently" as an excuse, you would send it back (I hope).

[philipma1957]

Despite the majority voting against it, apparently they did the right thing and returned that fee anyway:

Who's to say it was the right thing to do? Whenever the average user makes a mistake and over pays their fee, they simply have to wave goodbye to their money. Why should it be different for Paxos?

Depends on your morality (or lack thereof) I guess. To me it's pretty clear. If you know that someone paid you too much in error, and it's practical and possible to refund them - you should.
If you sold a car to your friend and they accidentally wired you $20k instead of $10k, you wouldn't use "other people make mistakes and lose money permanently" as an excuse, you would send it back (I hope).

Would be an ideal world 🌍.  The problem is there are so many crooked people it does not happen enough at least in this case it was fixed.

And my small pool I am in did not need to face the issue.

[o_e_l_e_o]

If you sold a car to your friend and they accidentally wired you $20k instead of $10k, you wouldn't use "other people make mistakes and lose money permanently" as an excuse, you would send it back (I hope).

That's a different scenario. We will have agreed on a price in advance, so it is clear what you sent was a mistake.

If I pay 100 sats/vbyte in fees, is that clearly a mistake? What about 200? 500? The last block contained two transactions paying over 1,000 sats/vbyte in fees, when 40 sats/vbyte would have been sufficient. Should the miner refund those transactions? Or indeed, should they refund every transaction which paid more than what was necessary? What's stopping me from making all my transactions pay 1,000 sats/vbyte and then demand that the miner return my fee?

If you send all your coins to the wrong address, no one can get them back for you. I don't see why we should expect any different if you pay too much in fees. You might get lucky and the miner in question might be feeling generous, but you definitely shouldn't work on the assumption that they will refund your fee nor that you would have any legal recourse in such a situation.

[Synchronice]

How are you so sure that there's nil lawyers would have no idea about this kind of case? Is your superiority complex that bad that you think that other people that don't have an inkling of knowledge or their interests are outside of bitcoin don't have the idea what they can do with this? They don't need to know it, the clients and the defendants just need to tell the truth and everything that the court needs to know so they can make a case about it. Clearly you and I aren't a student that's involve with law but I don't just blurt conjecture with confidence. Not everything wrong with bitcoin is money laundering, it's been proven already that bitcoin's a bad cryptocurrency to use for that kind of activity.

Seriously, watch TikTok trial courte, watch every minute of it and you'll understand why I am so confident when I say that.
Or just watch it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0QbtLh976I
Are you still sure that they'll know how bitcoin, bitcoin mining and blockchain network works in depth? They asked such a dumb questions to TikTok CEO, especially when it was truly their wish to ban TikTok and stop its operations.

Depends on your morality (or lack thereof) I guess. To me it's pretty clear. If you know that someone paid you too much in error, and it's practical and possible to refund them - you should.
If you sold a car to your friend and they accidentally wired you $20k instead of $10k, you wouldn't use "other people make mistakes and lose money permanently" as an excuse, you would send it back (I hope).

How much is too much? How are we going to set the limit where after certain satoshis, it's too much? And on individual level, probably $5 more fee is too much for me than half a million dollar for PayPal.

Car's price is fixed price while in bitcoin world, there is no fixed fee to make a transaction, that's why your argument is weak.

[pawel7777]

That's a different scenario. We will have agreed on a price in advance, so it is clear what you sent was a mistake.

If I pay 100 sats/vbyte in fees, is that clearly a mistake? What about 200? 500? The last block contained two transactions paying over 1,000 sats/vbyte in fees, when 40 sats/vbyte would have been sufficient. Should the miner refund those transactions? Or indeed, should they refund every transaction which paid more than what was necessary? What's stopping me from making all my transactions pay 1,000 sats/vbyte and then demand that the miner return my fee?

These are excuses and you know it. You ignored the parts where I mentioned: "If you know that someone paid you too much in error, and it's practical and possible to refund them". No one is talking about anyone demanding a refund, but whether it would be a moral thing to do from the recipient's perspective.
Just because it's judgmental of what the "refundable" amount would be, it doesn't mean it's the right thing to keep any amount sent in error (even if you have a legal right to do so).
Somehow nobody in this thread had any trouble recognising that 20btc was not a normal fee and it was likely sent in error.

If you send all your coins to the wrong address, no one can get them back for you.

Recipient could. If I sent all my bitcoins to your address by some weird accident, I'd like to think you would return them. Not because you have to, but because it's the right thing to do.

I don't see why we should expect any different if you pay too much in fees. You might get lucky and the miner in question might be feeling generous, but you definitely shouldn't work on the assumption that they will refund your fee nor that you would have any legal recourse in such a situation.

Nobody is saying anything about any "expectations" or about introducing any rules that miners must refund such fees.
As for legal recourse - you don't know that. I could easily imagine miner being ordered to return it in some jurisdictions.

[philipma1957]

That's a different scenario. We will have agreed on a price in advance, so it is clear what you sent was a mistake.

If I pay 100 sats/vbyte in fees, is that clearly a mistake? What about 200? 500? The last block contained two transactions paying over 1,000 sats/vbyte in fees, when 40 sats/vbyte would have been sufficient. Should the miner refund those transactions? Or indeed, should they refund every transaction which paid more than what was necessary? What's stopping me from making all my transactions pay 1,000 sats/vbyte and then demand that the miner return my fee?

These are excuses and you know it. You ignored the parts where I mentioned: "If you know that someone paid you too much in error, and it's practical and possible to refund them". No one is talking about anyone demanding a refund, but whether it would be a moral thing to do from the recipient's perspective.
Just because it's judgmental of what the "refundable" amount would be, it doesn't mean it's the right thing to keep any amount sent in error (even if you have a legal right to do so).
Somehow nobody in this thread had any trouble recognising that 20btc was not a normal fee and it was likely sent in error.

If you send all your coins to the wrong address, no one can get them back for you.

Recipient could. If I sent all my bitcoins to your address by some weird accident, I'd like to think you would return them. Not because you have to, but because it's the right thing to do.

I don't see why we should expect any different if you pay too much in fees. You might get lucky and the miner in question might be feeling generous, but you definitely shouldn't work on the assumption that they will refund your fee nor that you would have any legal recourse in such a situation.

Nobody is saying anything about any "expectations" or about introducing any rules that miners must refund such fees.
As for legal recourse - you don't know that. I could easily imagine miner being ordered to return it in some jurisdictions.

Yeah I am sure some judges in some countries would force a refund. I am also pretty sure if you are USA based there is no precedent on refunding so you would need to be very careful about taxes with a refund.

[o_e_l_e_o]

No one is talking about anyone demanding a refund, but whether it would be a moral thing to do from the recipient's perspective.

It would of course be the right thing to do from the sender's perspective. But is it the right thing to do from the individual miners' perspective? They have honestly mined a valid transaction, and now their pool operator is denying them the profits? Should it really be up to the pool operator at all? Should each individual miner not get to decide what to do with their share of the excess fee which they earned honestly?

I don't think it's as simple as "I paid too much in fees, give it back".