Antpool, one of the leading mining pools in the cryptocurrency industry, has recently made an announcement regarding a major incident involving a transaction fee. They have taken the initiative to return 83 Bitcoin (BTC) which was mistakenly paid as a transaction fee by a user. This incident has sparked significant attention and reactions within the cryptocurrency community.
Refunding the Fee with Certain Requirements
Antpool has stated that they will refund the fee to the affected user while implementing a verification process to determine the ownership of the asset. In their statement, they mentioned, “Dear users, on November 23rd, some user submitted 83 BTC as gas fee. The risk control system of Antpool temporarily froze the fee when packaging the transaction. Please contact us before 00:00 (UTC+8) on December 10 2023 and verify personal identity in the following way. After verification, Antpool will refund the fee.”
To proceed with the refund, the affected user is required to prepare a signing tool, such as Bitcoin Core or Electrum. They will then use the private key of their wallet to sign a message “Antpool” and forward the signed text to the customer support.
This verification process ensures that the rightful owner receives the refund and prevents potential fraud or unauthorized claims.
The Incident and Community Response
This incident occurred on November 23 when a Bitvoiner accidentally paid 83 BTC, equivalent to approximately $3.1 million, as a transaction fee. The user intended to transfer 139 BTC but ended up parting ways with a significant portion by mistake. Antpool, the mining pool responsible for the transaction, has now provided additional information on the return process.
At the time of the incident, the entire cryptocurrency community and experts shared their opinions on the matter, which resulted in one of the highest transaction fees ever recorded. Initial analysis pointed towards the replace-by-fee feature, which allows transactions in the mempool to be replaced by another with a higher fee. Some experts speculated that the affected user may not have been aware that orders cannot be canceled and made those transactions with the hope of cancellation.
“When such mistakes occur, the mining pool usually refunds the user if possible, although in some cases, the users were only able to recover 50% of their assets,”
– Mining Analyst
This incident is not an isolated case. In the past, similar incidents have occurred where users mistakenly paid high transaction fees. In some instances, mining pools have refunded the users, although the percentage of assets recovered varied. For example, in September, Paxos paid a $500,000 transaction fee to move $2,000 worth of assets, and days later, the miner who received the fee announced its return to the company.
However, it is worth noting that the return of such fees often leads to debates within the community, with some suggesting that the assets should be shared among the entire community.
“A user who claimed to be the victim of the 83 BTC transfer fee attributed it to a hack resulting in the expensive gas fee,”
– Crypto Enthusiast
