The Most Expensive Transaction on Ethereum Cost USD 23.5 Million

Bitfinex Ethereum Exchange Fees

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Fredrik Vold

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Fredrik Vold

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October 23, 2023 09:34 EDT

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Today, crypto exchange Bitfinex paid USD 23.5m (ETH 7,676.61) in transaction fees for a transfer of close to USD 100,000 in tether (USDT) via the Ethereum (ETH) network, according to public transaction data on Etherscan.

The transfer was made at 11:10 UTC on Monday, and appears to have been sent from a wallet controlled by Bitfinex to a wallet belonging to DeversiFi, a non-custodial exchange spun off from Bitfinex in 2019.

“In transactions such as these, the fees are shouldered by third-party integrations with Bitfinex. This has also been confirmed by DeversiFi in their recent statement. We look forward to DeversiFi’s investigation and to their having this matter sorted on their side,” a spokesperson for Bitfinex told Cryptonews.com.

DeversiFi confirmed that “a deposit transaction was made using a hardware wallet from the main DeversiFi user interface with an erroneously high gas fee.” Per the company, they are “investigating the cause to determine how this occurred […],” while adding that no customer funds are at risk.

Judging from transaction data on Etherscan, the USDT transfer was made using the new EIP-1559 standard, which – among other things – is intended to improve the estimation of transaction fees on the network.

The transaction was made with what is possibly the largest transaction fee ever to be paid in crypto. Other incidents in the past include a USD 5.3m transaction fee paid on Ethereum by the small Korean P2P exchange Good Cycle. 
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Reactions:
 

Based on what I know, the miner has cashed out.

— Anndy Lian (@anndylian) September 27, 2021

i don't think that calling time bandits an "academic attack" or provoking this to happen is useful 🙂

the answer is that the incentives of miners still remain to not reorg the chain bc they include future revenue and that's impacted by eth price which is impacted by reorgs

— Georgios Konstantopoulos (@gakonst) September 27, 2021

Would be insane if miners start reorg-ing and re-mining this same block to compete for $23m tx fees (way way way better than block rewards).

Probably too late now though since like ~700 blocks have been mined on top.https://t.co/8iu2zrtaJ0 https://t.co/mjSGIchxoo

— swit.eth #6010 (@nomorebear) September 27, 2021

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Learn more: 
– MEV Harms Ethereum Users And it May Be Here For Some Time 
– Ethereum’s Hope No. 1559: What It Does and What It Doesn’t Do 
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(Updated on September 28, 3:13 UTC to clarify that the fee was paid by Bitfinex.)