Mining Pools Decide on Distribution of 23,000 ETH in Fees from Abnormal Transactions

After a week of failed deliberation on the $5.5 million (23,646 ETH) earned as fees for three transactions, the mining pools have made their decision on the distribution. After the reports of the first transaction came out, two similar transactions were made on the following days again.

Two pools, SparkPool and Ethermine, have decided to distribute the fees to their miners. However, F2Pool has decided to return the abnormally high fees back to the original address. SparkPool noted that ‘until now sender, with valid proof of the sending address ownership, has not contacted us.’

We have reached out to the Global Business Director of F2Pool on the reasons behind their decision and waiting to hear from them. Dovey Wan, crypto analyst and founding partner at Primitive Crypto tweeted,

both SparkPool and Ethermine decided to distribute the abnormal 1K ETH fees to all their miners, while F2Pool decided to return back to the original address

I personally support SparkPool and Ethermine for its neutrality when it comes to block agnostic fee distribution

Nevertheless, while the timing of the three transactions is suspicious, one of them might be a separate occurrence. The third transaction with around 2,300 ETH transaction fees might have been a separate hacking attempt. In an email comment, the team at F2Pool told CoinGape that is still investigating the transaction to determine the course of action.

A Blackmail?

Analysts jointly rebuffed the money laundering attempt by verifying the nature of the transaction. As the excess fees are practically being distributed to the network of miners and mining pools.

Nevertheless, a hacking attempt or blackmail is not out of the question. Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum pointed out to the possibility. He tweeted,

So the million-dollar txfees *may* actually be blackmail. The theory: hackers captured partial access to exchange key; they can’t withdraw but can send no-effect txs with any gasprice. So they threaten to “burn” all funds via txfees unless compensated.

Also Read: Chainalysis To Analyze Recent Ethereum (ETH) Transactions With Over $3.3 M In Fees

Moreover, the sender hasn’t replied to the mining pools for over a week now, the silence around which raises considerable doubts as well. Nevertheless, if hacking or blackmail is the only issue, the entity under attack could easily reach out to the pools and protect their funds.

Dovey Wan speculated earlier that the address for the first two transactions of 10,668 ETH fees each, ‘it’s very likely to be exchange/financial services hot wallet with lot of incoming and outgoing flows.’

The reality of the situation remains a mystery.

Do you support the decision to distribute it to the miners or back to the sender? Please share your views with us.