Blockscroll

Ether mining pool to distribute the mistaken $2.6 million fee among its miners

In recent times Ether mining pool received a mistaken transaction fee worth $2.6 million from one of its users for transferring a much less amount. Today after four days, it has finally decided to distribute that amount among miners.
A tweet was also posted confirming this decision on June 15. It stated that the funds would be divided among all the people who participated in that block.

As the sender of the transaction https://t.co/h21A2Th4fw has not contacted us after 4 days we have made the final decision to distribute the tx fee to the miners of our pool. Given the amount involved we believe 4 days is sufficient time for the sender to get in touch with us.
— Bitfly (@etherchain_org) June 15, 2020

The company took four days to finally announce the news because it thinks;
given the amount involved we believe four days is sufficient time for the sender to get in touch with us.
On the other hand, a lot of criticism was also faced by the company for this decision.
Distribution of the fee
According to Etherscan, even though the $2.6 million fees is approximately one day’s worth of block rewards on Ethereum however, it is not spread evenly on the entire network, as Etherchain’s Ethermine pool only controls 21% of the hash rate. So, the miners would be given an amount equal to five days of normal mining.
Controversies behind this large transaction fee
There have been several theories regarding what could have happened behind this mistakenly large transaction fees. As reported by Cointelegraph,  PeckShield, which is a Chinese analysis firm, formulates that the website could be hacked.
The hackers gained complete access to an exchange, but they were unable to withdraw their funds because private keys are categorized. Thus, they can only send money to a white-listed address, but by setting such enormous fees, they are effectively wasting the money. It might be a part of some strategy of hackers, where they are requesting to be paid off in order to stop these transactions.
Whatever the case may be, this still remains a mystery particularly due to the fact that the user who deposited this heavy amount has still not contacted the company.
 

Camren Larson

Camren Larson

I’m a highly experienced and well-connected professional in the cryptocurrency industry. I have written for numerous publications, including Bitcoin Magazine, and have been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and other major news outlets. I am a sought-after speaker on the topic of cryptocurrency investing and have been a featured guest on several popular podcasts.

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