This User Just Paid $700,402 as Ethereum Transaction Fees to Send Nothing

A wallet spent 288 ETH as transaction fees and ended up sending nothing, triggering widespread reactions in the crypto community.

In today’s Ethereum news, another huge transaction fee was paid on the Ethereum network. According to blockchain transaction tracker Whale Alert, a user paid a staggering 288 ETH for a single transaction.

One of the most interesting developments around the transaction, besides its magnanimous transaction fee, was that the user ended up transferring nothing to the receiving address. Per Etherscan, the wallet address sent 0 ETH to the receiving address, while paying 288 ETH as fee.

Notably, the 288 ETH transaction fee was worth $700,402 at the time of writing, with Ether trading at $2,429 per coin. Data from Etherscan shows that the transaction happened today at 4:22 AM UTC.

Fat Finger?

The reasons behind the substantial transaction fee remain unknown at press time. However, the nature of the transaction seemed like a fat finger.

For context, a fat finger refers to an accidental or clumsy input of figures, resulting in excessive numbers being typed. An error such as this could result in network participants inputting the figures meant for the transaction size section in the transaction fee section.

Notably, after the erroneous transaction, the wallet address involved made another transfer. This time, it paid a fee of $0.1 to transfer 96 ETH to MevRefund, a white hat hacker and on-chain researcher. This subsequent transfer further bolstered speculation around the fat finger theory.

However, MevRefund flagged the sending address in the transaction as a compromised wallet. In a tweet, MevRefund insinuated that the hacker intentionally paid the outrageous transaction fees, seeing that the address to which he was sending the stolen funds had been feezed.

Hi @stakefish , I’m helping whitehat a compromised withdrawal address.

Unfortunately, it seems that if the bad guys can’t have it, nobody can 😢

Any chance you can return those stolen funds to the rightful owner?https://t.co/4TPQ4U6vuG pic.twitter.com/PA5CxbXayH

— MevRefund (@MevRefund) October 8, 2024

Other Huge Transaction Fees Paid

Notably, the recent 288 ETH transaction fee is the latest in a series of similar incidents. The highest transaction fee ever paid for a single transaction in the network remains the 7,676 ETH ($23.5 million), a figure paid by crypto exchange Bitfinex last year.

An earlier report shows that another user paid 34.62 ETH, valued at $92,504. Interestingly, the wallet paid more in fees than it transferred, as data showed it moved a mere 0.87 ETH.

Another user also paid 121.56 ETH ($157,764) to transfer 183 ETH ($237,502). Notably, this transaction fee was 78,882% more than the average $2 fee on the Ethereum network.