Crypto user fat fingers $90K fee for a $2K ETH transfer

An unknown crypto user appears to have accidentally spent $90,000 in gas fees in what should’ve been a simple transfer of $2,200 in Ether.

The user spent 34.26 Ether (ETH) — worth $89,200 at current prices — in gas to transfer 0.87 ETH, worth just $2,262, according to Etherscan data cited in an Aug. 11 post to X by pseudonymous user DeFiac.

At the time of publication, gas fees on the Ethereum network are hovering at yearly lows of between 2 and 4 gwei, meaning that a transfer of ETH should only cost a maximum of $5. Expressed as a percentage, the user overpaid by more than 1,783,900%.

So-called “fat finger” transactions are not uncommon in the crypto space.

On Oct. 10, 2023, an NFT trader paid a whopping 1,055 ETH — worth $1.6 million at the time — for an NFT that only cost $1,000.

On April 6, an OpenSea collector spent 100 ETH — $191,000 at the time — on a free NFT mint, sparking accusations of wash trading.

It’s not just retail participants that make mistakes with transfers either. In May 2021, Singapore-based crypto exchange Crypto.com accidentally sent $7 million to Thevamanogari Manivel, an Australian user of the exchange.

Manivel never reported the mishap and used the funds to purchase a multi-million-dollar mansion in Melbourne and sent around $4 million to an overseas bank account. She was sentenced to 209 days in jail for “dealing in the proceeds of crime.”

It's not always a fat-finger error

While overpaying gas fees on the Ethereum mainnet could have been accidental, it could’ve also been a sophisticated form of money laundering.

The user would need to be aware of which Ethereum validator would be validating the given transaction and ensure it was submitted in the correct block.

From there the anonymous user would need to have been working in lock-step with that validator to ensure the funds were not distributed to the incorrect entity.

In an October 2023 report, Crypto staking firm Northstake found that total illicit and high-risk activity on three Ethereum staking protocols and some areas of the mainnet hovered between 0.46% and 1.56%.

While this number is relatively low, Northstake said this leads to concerns from regulated entities looking to dip their toes in liquid staking protocols and Ethereum-based decentralized finance more broadly.