Since the owner of the scandalous transactions did not appear, the Ethereum mining company concluded with the idea of donating funds to the miner’s community.
Bitfly, an Austrian company behind the Ethereum mining pool, announced on Monday it will distribute the $2.6 million worth of odd ETH transaction fees to the miners of its mining pool.
Two unusual transactions on Ethereum network were made last week when the anonymous sender paid an incredible amount of $5.2 million worth of ETH as transaction fees.
The company came to a final decision to distribute mysterious funds among the miner pools community after a four days deadline has ended, which was given for the anonymous sender to get in touch.
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Although dozens of impostors tried to claim for the millions, none of them were able to submit the valid signature of the sender’s account to prove the ownership of the funds.
The Bitfly thus reported that it will be distributing funds to the miners according to the same hash rate, that was in force at a time when the block containing the mysterious transaction was minted on the Ethereum mining pool.
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Furthermore, the company added that this will be the last time when it is interfering in the payout of large transaction fees. According to the company’s tweet:
Our advertised payout policy is to always distribute the full block reward and we will be sticking to that independent on the amount involved.
The mysterious transactions
Two highly unusual transactions on the Ethereum network occurred last week. The unknown sender first made a 0.55 ETH (worth of $133) transaction on June 10, which contained a shockingly high fee of 10.000 ETH. With the current value of Ethereum, the total worth of it reached nearly $2.6 million.
Since the crypto community was in shock and started to raise conspiracies and their own versions of explanations, history repeated when the second scandalous transaction happened the next day. This time the same user sent 350 ETH including the fee worth $2.6 million at a time. The transaction was confirmed on block 10241999 by the Ethermine pool, which is a unit of Austrian-based Bitfly.
In the meantime, the average fee on the Ethereum network floats around $0.5 for the transaction, according to the data of ycharts.
The theories behind the strange transaction fees
Before raising various versions of why such transaction fees were paid, it is important to know that decentralized blockchain networks like Ethereum are unable to take back the transactions. Due to the decentralized nature of blockchain, the cautious check-up before sending funds is vital, as any mistake can not be canceled when the payment is made.
With this in mind, the crypto community was even more shocked, especially after when the first transaction occurred, which mainly raised presumptions of the fatal mistake. However, repetitive behavior increased the suspicions of money laundering or tax evasion.
Meanwhile, the Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin claimed, the absurdly high fees might be the blackmail. Buterin even shared theory in his tweet, suggesting that hackers took up partial access to the crypto exchange key, which may only be used to make transactions with any gas price, however it can not be used for withdrawals.
Since the final truth around the unusual transactions is still out there, the new facts reinforce suspicions of illegal activities being involved. According to the data of public identifier Etherscan, the address used for mysterious transactions was created just days before the first one of them was accomplished.
